Confused Pakistan cancels conference

Separatist leader Yasin Malik to skip Pak reception

New Delhi/Islamabad: Pakistan has cancelled the Commonwealth Parliamentary conference due to tensions with India, just three days before the National Security Advisors of India Ajit Doval and Pakistan’s Sartaj Aziz are to meet in Delhi on Sunday. The Commonwealth conference, to be held in Islamabad on September 30, has been cancelled because Indian lawmakers from Kashmir planned to attend, said Pakistani parliamentary speaker Ayaz Sadiq. Pakistan "saw an opportunity to raise the Kashmir issue" by refusing to host the conference, Sadiq said.

"When it is clear that we have fought wars over this, brought resolutions in the United Nations, then how can we abandon our point of view (on Kashmir) now?" he said.

It is unclear if the parliamentary conference is cancelled or will be held elsewhere. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association links legislators in former British colonies.

In India, top Kashmiri separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, were put under house arrest only to be released within hours in actions that were linked to their proposed meeting with Sartaj Aziz..

Early on Thursday morning, police put restrictions on the movement of the several separatist leaders including moderate Hurriyat Chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Maulana Mohammad Abbas Ansari, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, Shabir Ahmad Shah and Ayaz Akbar.

Security personnel were deployed outside the Hydrepora residence of Geelani, the hardline Hurriyat chief who is already under house arrest. JKLF Chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik was taken into preventive custody from his Maisuma residence and lodged at police station Kothibagh.

India has made it clear that it won't accept any meeting between Aziz and the separatists, who have been invited to a reception hosted by the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi on Sunday evening.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah criticised the government in a series of tweets. "I've never seen an Indo-Pak dialogue where both sides are so keen to sabotage it. India & Pak competing to give reasons to call off talks," he commented.

Meanwhile, the confusion that impelled the house arrest and then the release, two hours later, of Kashmiri separatists in Srinagar is matched by an equally befuddling explanation of just who called the shots.

Sources in the central government say orders were sent from Delhi. In Kashmir, sources say it was Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, who asked for the house arrest to be revoked. After that, they say, the Chief Minister phoned top police officials to end the detention.

But Delhi sources insist the police took its orders from the Centre. Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Yasin Malik will not attend Pakistan high commission's reception. He will, however, send a two-member team to represent him. Pakistan government said that the plan for a meeting with separatists remains unchanged and "India has conveyed no message linking it to the fate of the talks."