Sharma can only succeed if report tabled in Parliament: Farooq

Srinagar: Veteran politician Farooq Abdullah has said the efforts of the Centre's special representative for Kashmir can move forward only if Dineshwar Sharma's final report is tabled in the two Houses of Parliament for discussion.

The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, who was re- elected president of the National Conference, the state's main opposition party, stressed that New Delhi also needed to explain what it wished to achieve by appointing Sharma as a special representative for talks on Kashmir.

Different voices emerging from power corridors had reduced him to a "zero" even before he could start the talks, he said.

bdullah, 80, stressed he had never been against talks, but was "baffled by the lack of clarity" on the Centre's move.

"Even before he (Sharma) was to visit the Valley, there were different voices emerging from New Delhi including that from the minister in PMO (Jitendra Singh) who said Sharma was not an interlocutor," the ex-chief minister said.

Sharma's mandate, he added, was not clear to anybody in Kashmir.

Mumbai: Criticising former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah over his statement that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) belongs to Pakistan, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Sunday that the National Conference president "talks irrationally sometimes".

Abdullah said yesterday that PoK belongs to Pakistan and "this won't change" no matter how many wars India and Pakistan fight. His statement came a few days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi rejected the idea of an "independent Kashmir", saying it was not based on "reality".