Indian Ambassador Lalit Mansingh and the entire Indian embassy staff will boycott a major `Kashmir peace conference' on Capitol Hill slated for July 24.

Organized by the San Francisco-based Association for Humanitarian Lawyers and the Kashmiri American Council -- the US appendage of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, that lobbies its interests in Congress and the Administration - the conference is being inaugurated by an influential Senator and an equally influential US Representative.

Mansingh told rediff.com, "If you just look at the names of the people who are behind it, it's quite clear they have an agenda. So there's no question of our taking part in it."

Four-term Senator Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, and four-term Representative Joseph Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican, who will inaugurate the conference titled `Beyond the Blame Game: Finding Common Grounds for Peace and Justice in Kashmir', have been long time sympathizers of the pro-Pakistani lobby and the KAC. They have also benefited handsomely from contributions from them to their campaign coffers.

Harkin in particular has been cultivated for several years by the influential Pakistani physician community. Over the years he has gone on record calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir.

Pitts, a member of the House International Relations Committee and a relative newcomer in terms of his bias toward Pakistan and pushing the Kashmir issue, has been no less active.

Two years ago Pitts tried to set up a Kashmir Forum in the US Congress but did not have any success, with very few lawmakers willing to join his endeavor and the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans effectively killing the effort while the State Department and White House too frowned on the initiative. But this has not thwarted him from pressing the issue at every opportunity; he was apparently responsible for making a room available in the Cannon House Office Building for the conference.

Mansingh said, "Pitts tried to organize a Kashmir Forum within Congress and that fortunately fizzled out, because our argument was that if Congress wants to know about Jammu and Kashmir you don't need a new forum -- you can have a hearing on one of the committees. Fortunately that didn't find any takers."

Mansingh acknowledged that the KAC, by joining with the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers that was previously "active on human rights issues and have commented on Jammu and Kashmir and Sri Lanka," were trying to lend a degree of credibility and legitimacy to the conference as not being a totally pro-Pakistan parley.

No Bush Administration official is scheduled to address the conference, neither are any established American South Asia policy analysts belonging to any of the leading think tanks in Washington or anywhere else in the country.

Save for a couple of Indian and Indian-American panelists -- like Rajmohan Gandhi, visiting scholar at the Institute of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois; Subramanian Swamy, president, All India Janata Party; Professor Raju Thomas, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Ved Bhasin, Editor-in-Chief, Kashmir Times, Jammu; and Pushpa Iyer, Institute of Conflict Resolution, George Mason University -- the rest of the panelists are Pakistanis, Kashmiris representing the Hurriyat and several from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

They include Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Ashraf J Qazi; Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, former prime minister of POK; Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Yasin Malik and Professor Abdul Gani Bhat of the APHC; Mushahid Hussain, noted Pakistani journalist and columnist and former federal information minister of Pakistan; Dr Hameeda Bano, English Department, Kashmir University; Inamul Haq, former foreign minister of Pakistan; Dr (Mrs) Attiya Inayatullah, former federal minister of Pakistan; Dr Ayyub Thakur, president, World Kashmir Freedom Movement based in London; Pandit Bhushan Bazaz, president, Jammu Kashmir Democratic Forum in Srinagar.

The only non-Indians and non-Pakistanis, including non-Kashmiris, who have confirmed as panelists are Lars Rise, member, Norwegian Parliament; Dr Douglas Johnston, president, International Center for Peace and Diplomacy; Professor Stanley Wolpert, of the University of California in Los Angeles and author of Gandhi and Jinnah; Karen Parker, chairman, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers; T Kumar, Amnesty International, USA; and Knut Vollebaek, former foreign minister of Norway.

The panels slated at the conference range from `Kashmir: regional and international dimensions,' to `Kashmir: India-Pakistan relations,' and `Prospects for the future: alternative scenarios for resolving the Kashmir problem' to `The human rights dimension of the Kashmir problem.'

Haq, Johston and Malik are the scheduled keynoters at a luncheon titled `Kashmir: A way forward.' The next day, all the participants will brainstorm at an all-day roundtable at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill.