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Hizbul rejects Powell's plea on J&K election

Pakistan-based separatist outfit Hizbul Mujahideen has welcomed the American statement that 'Kashmir is on the international agenda', but rejected Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion that polls to the J&K assembly were the 'first step to bring peace in the region'.

"We welcome Powell's announcement in New Delhi that Kashmir is an international issue... but as far as his stand on the forthcoming farcical exercise (election) in Kashmir is concerned, we disagree with him," Hizbul's spokesman Salim Hashmi said.

Hizb has already called for a boycott of the polls and warned local politicians from contesting it.

"We are fully convinced that election can in no way lead to the solution of the Kashmir problem. India is holding them to form a local administration in the occupied territory. We have rejected the polls in the past and we reject them this time as well," Hashmi was quoted by the Pakistani daily Dawn as saying.

"... we make it clear that we are least concerned about the polls, whether they are free, fair or fraudulent," he said.

Drawing attention to the 1957 UN Security Council resolution on Kashmir, which calls for a plebiscite in the state, Hashmi said, "We are concerned about the provision of that opportunity to the Kashmiris to decide their future with free will and the very thing has been pledged to us by the world community long ago."

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