Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit greets Hurriyat Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq during Eid Milan. (Press Trust of India photo)
If Kashmiri separatists travel to the capital to meet Pakistan's Sartaj Aziz, scheduled to visit for talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, they could be detained on arrival at the Delhi airport, government sources have said.
If that happens, they would be released only after talks between the NSAs of India and Pakistan have taken place, the sources said.
The crucial talks, scheduled to be held on Sunday and Monday, were precariously positioned on Friday with India warning that any meeting between the Kashmiri separatists and the Pakistani delegation is unacceptable. Pakistan has asserted that it will not cancel a meeting with the separatists.
While sources at the Centre said that the effort would be to keep the separatists from leaving Srinagar for Delhi, the People's Democratic Party of Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has reportedly refused to arrest or detain them in the state capital.
The PDP has argued that no state government has ever disallowed the separatists from meeting visiting Pakistani leaders in Delhi.
Separatists Yasin Malik, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq were placed under house arrest in Srinagar yesterday, but were released within two hours, reportedly after Mehbooba Mufti, who heads the PDP and is the chief minister's daughter, intervened.
While the detention was described by the Centre as a signal that the separatists "cannot be a third party to talks" and that they could be detained again if they tried to meet the Pakistani delegation, the quick release was seen as the state government's position on the matter.
India called off talks last July after Pakistan consulted Kashmiri separatists before a meeting of Foreign Secretaries.