Saturday, May 02, 2009

Kashmir: Iran had no hand in Kashmir polls

IRNA reports a senior Hurriyat leader said on Friday that the Shia community had an important role in the current movement, asserting that there was no question of a responsible country like Iran to interfere in parliamentary elections in Kashmir.

“Iran, which was fully conversant with the situation here, cannot urge the Shias to vote for a candidate of a particular community, and nor will it be allowed to do so,” the Hurriyat Conference leader and prominant Shia cleric Agha Syed Hassan said in a statement today.

Agha Hassan's statement came in the wake of reports in a section of local press that Iranian embassy in New Delhi had summoned Shia clerics from Kashmir and asked them to lend support to PDP candidadte for Srinagar parliamentary constituency, Moulavi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, who is also a prominant Shia leader.

“Iran has always supported the resolution of the Kashmir issue and wants a just and acceptable outcome,” he said, adding that it should have no interest in the assembly or parliamentary elections in Kashmir.

“If somebody from the Shia community contests elections, it must be taken as his personal decision.

There cannot be any interference by Iran in this because it is a country fully aware of the situation here,” he said.
Published by Mike Hitchen, Mike Hitchen Consulting
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