Kashmiri separatists on Friday asked both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif to come down to “serious diplomacy” and “openly” discuss the issue of the valley.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014, he had maintained, as a necessary precondition for talks, that third-party involvement would not be allowed.

“Be it cricket diplomacy, birthday diplomacy, only the nomenclatures change but issues remain the same. Unless these two countries address the core issue of Kashmir nothing will move forward. We have seen leaders hugging and then heading for wars,” Ayaz Akber, a close aide of separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, told BusinessLine .

Recently, a group of Hurriyat leaders led by Geelani met Pakistan High Commi-ssioner to India Abdul Basit and asked him to maintain “consistency and firmness” in their Kashmir policy. The meeting followed foreign minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Pakistan.

“This sort of a precondition is not going to work out at all. While leaders should meet and create a comfort level of their own, the fate of Kashmiris cannot be decided by these leaders alone. It is our movement and we will not allow that go in vain. They can deal all other issues bilaterally but not Kashmir dispute,” said another Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah.

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