New Delhi: National Security Adviser J N Dixit today (Nov 13, 2004) slammed the Hurriyat Conference for insisting on talking to Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi and not to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, saying, "we can't have this high-horse spirit."

"Let Pakistan talk to their own Kashmiris and we will do the same. Why should we respond to Pakistan's insistence that talks should be held in their territory and at their insistence," he said in a hard-hitting interview to Tehelka weekly.

Known for candid speaking, Dixit, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, said Umer Farooq, acting chairman of Hurriyat, had met Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in Amsterdam and "the Pakistan High Commissioner is a permanent host to them.

"He always has time for them. We can't have this high-horse spirit -- that you can speak to the High Commissioner of Pakistan but not the Home Minister of India," he said.

He was asked why India was so scared of letting Hurriyat leaders travel to Pakistan.

Having a formal delegation visit Pakistan was Islamabad's tactic of having tripartite talks in which they only want those hardline representatives who talk of separation and secession, he contended.

On why India was always "so hesitant" about the K-word and what in his view was a likely solution to the problem, Dixit said "we have to first be responsive to what the Kashmiris want and have also to think of innovative ways of not letting talks break down."

He said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was clear on two points--that there can be no territorial delineation and that there can be no timeframe for such negotiations.

Dixit also made it clear that the Hurriyat Conference was not the only organisation that represented the Kashmiris. "I am talking about the Pundits (Kashmiri) and other mainstream political parties."

When reminded that the Hurriyat leaders were engaged in talks with the Centre during the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) regime and occupied some political space in the Valley, he said the Home Minister had invited them for talks soon after taking office. "But then they killed Mirwaiz Umer Farooq's uncle. Syed Ali Shah Geelani has his own pre-conditions, that he will talk only after going to Pakistan.

"Why this insistence on Pakistan? And just because they wield the gun, they don't become the representatives of the Kashmiris. They are only part of the political nucleus of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

Dixit described as a "trial balloon" Musharraf's recent proposal that India and Pakistan should identify some "regions" of Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control, demilitarise them and grant them the status of independence or joint control or under UN mandate.