New Delhi
27 June 2006
The European Parliament's rapporteur on Jammu and Kashmir is in
India to prepare a detailed dossier for consideration of lawmakers in Brussels. Baroness
Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne, who is a British politician and a member of European
Parliament, says her report will equip member-states with the facts for formulating an
appropriate policy in the long term.
She spent Monday in New Delhi meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Union
Minister of Home Affairs Shivraj Patil, Centre's interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir NN
Vohra, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and a National Human Rights Commission
delegation. She has set aside two days for her travels in Jammu and Kashmir including
a visit to the Line of Control.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne has already visited Pakistan where she called on
Pakistan Premier Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. "I
discussed [Indo-Pak] confidence building measures with them," she told this newspaper
and recounted how during her travel to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir she "saw first hand"
a bus ferrying passengers across the LoC.
Acknowledging that "there are lessons to learn from India," she explains that 9/11 jolted
the EU and "magnetised our attention on this part of the world." Accordingly her report,
she elaborates, can be expected to dwell in equal measure on political issues like
terrorism, democracy and human rights and humanitarian concerns like earthquake relief
and rehabilitation in POK.
Incidentally, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne's visit to India comes 60 years after
her father Sir Godfrey Nicholson was sent by the British Crown to know first hand what
Indians thought about the British rule. Arriving in 1946, he escaped his official handlers
to spend three months in villages talking to people. Sir Godfrey Nicholson's daughter
hopes to keep her ear to the ground too.
"I am here to listen," she asserts before venturing to give details about how she intends
to divide her time talking to Governor Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha and going to the refugee
camps. A visit to the Valley and getting a briefing from the Army officials are also on her
itinerary. Her "modest" but "serious" report, she adds, will be used like "a tuning fork to
strike the right vibrations" among European lawmakers.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne's assertions notwithstanding, European
Parliament's resolutions in the past have met with scepticism in New Delhi. The October
2001 resolution on Kashmir read, "[The European Parliament] asks the EU to [act] as an
honest broker to both India and Pakistan with a view to facilitating the process [and] to
assist the fight against terrorism."
A more recent resolution on November 17, 2005, in turn, read: "[EU] calls [on India and
Pakistan] to continue with the process that should, while involving the population
concerned, lead to a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue". EU delegations have
visited J&K in the past. In 2004 a team led by parliamentarian John Cushnahan spent
three days in the Valley.
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