Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq accepts Pakistan's Eid Milan invite

Decision comes days after senior Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani refused to attend the Eid Milan party

Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and senior executive member Mansoor Abbas Ansari accepted on Thursday the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi's invitation for Eid Milan on July 21. 

Mirwaiz Farooq said they will use the occasion to emphasise that India and Pakistan cannot resolve their ‘secondary issues’ without including Kashmir in the dialogue process.

"Although Hurriyat Conference supports the dialogue process between India and Pakistan, the two countries cannot resolve their secondary issues without including Kashmir in the dialogue process. We will present this stand clearly during our visit (to Pakistan High Commission)," the spokesperson for the moderate Hurriyat Conference said, after a meeting chaired by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Srinagar.

Read: Hurriyat chief snubs Eid Milan invite

The spokesperson further said that Hurriyat’s resolve to attend the event was not a political reaction but based on its policy for the resolution of the Kashmir issue.

The acceptance of the invitation comes days after veteran Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani refused to attend the Eid Milan party in protest against Pakistan for ‘ignoring the Kashmir cause’.

Geelani said the joint statement issued by Indian and Pakistani prime ministers after their recent meet-up in the Russian city of Ufa had failed to mention the Kashmir issue. “The failure of the joint statement to make a special mention of the Kashmir problem indicates callousness towards a human problem that concerns the lives and future of 13 million people living in Indian and Pakistani-controlled parts of Jammu and Kashmir,” he stated.

Read: Kashmir leaders invited for Eid Milan

The Pakistan High Commission in India had invited the Hurriyat leaders and other politicians of the disputed territory to the function scheduled for July 21. The leaders had earlier been invited to an Iftar party also, but it was cancelled because of over 1,300 heatstroke-related deaths in Karachi.

Sources in the APHC had earlier said no member from the party would attend the event. They also alleged the earlier Iftar party was cancelled to create a favourable atmosphere for the meeting of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Russia.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Times