As per WikiLeaks, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jammu and Kashmir’s main opposition party, had offered to form a post-election coalition with the Hurriyat moderates before the 2008 Assembly polls. The Hurriyat, however, didn’t contest the elections.
The secret cable sent from the US Embassy on April 12, 2007 gives details of a discussion that happened between PDP legislator Altaf Bukhari and US Embassy officials.
“When asked about the consequences for the peace process if the PDP were to force fresh elections, (Altaf) Bukhari explained that PDP leader Mufti (Mohammad Sayeed) has offered to ally with the moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) — allowing them to lead a J&K government even if they hold fewer seats than the PDP after elections — in order to bring peace to the Valley. The easiest thing we can give the separatists to bring about peace is political power, Bukhari said, claiming that is what Mufti had told the PM,” the cable states.
“When asked if the PDP would go so far as to help the APHC find the political space necessary to enter politics, Bukhari said PDP is a political party, after all, so ‘we can’t ally with the APHC until after elections’,” it reads.
Though Bukhari talks about the post-poll alliance with moderates, the then US ambassador David Mulford doesn’t seem convinced. In his comments at the end of the cable, he says the PDP’s decision to raise the demilitarisation issue was Mufti’s “pre-emptive attack” to outdo Hurriyat moderates.
The cable quotes Bukhari saying the PDP doesn’t want real demilitarisation in Kashmir. “Bukhari said the PDP was not asking for India to withdraw its security forces from the Valley...He commented that the government could build its security forces their own shelters in a matter of months, keeping them from occupying private and public buildings...,” it reads.
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