Hina to meet separatists before talks with Krishna

Khar met Fai in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana in the last week of June. She is also set to have meetings with Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Shah Gilani and other Kashmiri separatist leaders in New Delhi next Tuesday, just a day before her talks with External Affairs Minister S M Krishna.

With India ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the Foreign Minister level talks with Pakistan, New Delhi on Friday declined to make any comment on Fai’s arrest for his links with the spy agency of Pakistan, stating that the facts spoke for themselves.

Fai headed the Kashmiri American Council in Washington DC. He was arrested by the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday from his residence in Fairfax in Virginia on charges of receiving hundreds and thousands of dollars from the Pakistani spy agency and using them for lobbying at the Capitol Hill and holding seminars and conferences by inviting eminent journalists and intellectuals.

Khar was the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, when she met Fai on the sideline of an Organization of Islamic Conference meet in Astana. Fai was accompanied by other prominent overseas Kashmiri activists Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi, Abdul Majeed Tramboo, Nazir Ahmad Shawl and Ghulam Mohammad Safi.

The US Justice Department filed a criminal complaint in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, alleging that the KAC had received up to $ 4 billion in illegal contributions from the ISI. Fai was accused of flouting laws that prohibit US citizens from working for foreign governments without being authorised to do so.

Asked to comment on the arrest of Fai, Khar on Friday said in Islamabad that the arrested Kashmiri activist was a US citizen. “He will be able to resolve his present problem within the available system,” she said.

She, however, did not refer to her meeting with Fai in Astana. Khar was elevated from Minister of State to the cabinet rank last Tuesday.