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Is US using the Kashmir issue to try and get a permanent foothold in South Asia? Post your views

New Delhi: Hurriyat Conference on May 18 said softening of line of control (LoC) or the border in Jammu and Kashmir should be considered only after the talks on Kashmir issue started and warned that this policy should not be construed as a permanent solution to the problem.

"When talks start, we will consider each issue with a perspective and with a purpose but we should not forget the bone of contention was the LoC, which by no stretch of imagination can be construed as a base for a permanent and lasting solution of the Kashmir problem," Hurriyat Chairman Abdul Gani Bhat said.

Stating that the proposed talks should not be held for the sake of talks, he said, "The solution has to be worked out on a principle and for a cause."

"The line drawn as a consequence of hostilities amidst blood and cutting as it does across our souls, can never be a lasting border," Bhat, who is at the fag end of his chairmanship of the amalgam, said.

The chairman was also in favour of maintaining silence over the issue saying, "Let us not do something or say something to vitiate the propitious climate that has started generating in the subcontinent."

PTI