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Kamal Siddiqi
ISLAMABAD, SEPT 20: The controversy surrounding former Pakistan foreign secretary Niaz Naik plot seems to have thickened with a newspaper now reporting that Naik's confessions to the daily Jung last week were those he had privately shared with diplomats, policy makers and journalists on several occasions in the past. Moreover, the paper also alleged that Naik was in possession of three key documents giving details of secret talks between India and Pakistan on a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem.
In a report published in the Lahore-based daily The Nation on Monday, journalist Talat Hussain alleged that Naik had stated that the Pakistan-India secret talks if implemented would have resulted in the territorial division of Kashmir.
``The division would have meant formalisation of the Line of Control with some mutually accepted adjustments on Jammu, Ladakh and the Kashmir Valley, which would have been given time-bound autonomy,'' writes Talat Hussain.
The paper said that Naik gave thesedetails in the past as part of the larger workable, final and permanent solution discussed during a dozen round of talks that started in March this year as a follow up to the Lahore declaration.
Naik named this proposal the ``Chenab Solution,'' which was discussed with R K Mishra, a Ministry of External Affairs official, who had worked out a time frame in which to implement this.
The paper says that Naik also has in his possession three key documents --the first a draft proposal, the second is the Indian response to the proposal and the third is a Pakistani reply to the Indian response.
Naik also talked about the interest shown by Vajpayee in the time-bound frame work for a solution to the Kashmir crisis. During his meeting with Naik in April, Vajpayee is reported to have said that only eight months remained and that two months had already been ``wasted in procedural matters.''
The report also says that Naik claims that many ingredients of the Chenab solution were debated in the Neemrana Process oftrack 2 diplomacy.
The paper says that whether Islamabad agreed to the Naik formula or not, apart from the prime minister, two members of the kitchen cabinet and the senior officials of the foreign ministry were in the know of things.
Meanwhile, Jung newspaper reported that Naik personally explained to the Prime Minister last week his side of the story following the publication of his remarks in the press. Senior military officials also attended the meeting.
Naik was sent by Sharif to meet Vajpayee with a special message at the height of the Kargil crisis.
Naik told mediapersons last week in Karachi that had Sharif known about the Kargil exercise in time, ``the Kargil crisis would not have happened''. Naik also said that had the crisis not surfaced, an agreement on Kashmir would have taken place in October.
But more important was Naik's assertion that there was no ``appropriate coordination'' among the planners of the military exercises in Kargil and that is why they remained in the darkabout the nature of the ``secret diplomacy'' that took place.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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