Hours after the Centre's interlocutor, N N Vohra, arrived in Srinagar on Monday, the separatist All-Party Hurriyat Conference appeared to have shut its door on him.
Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat told rediff.com: "Much bigger developments are shaping up across the subcontinent and the issues Vohra is required to take up pale in significance.
"His role concerns administrative and probably constitutional relations between the state and the Centre, which he will discuss with the pro-India political parties. This, obviously, does not figure in our agenda and he cannot, I am afraid, take up the political settlement of the dispute on Jammu and Kashmir as an interlocutor."
However, the Hurriyat chairman refused to categorically say that the amalgam would not talk to Vohra.
Vohra arrived on a weeklong visit to hold talks with the ruling People's Democratic Party, the National Conference and the Communist Party of India-Marxist.
Immediately after arriving, he met the former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, A S Daulat, and other officials.
"Let him talk to them. We don't object to his talking to anybody. Let him talk to anybody he chooses," said Bhat.
Shabir Shah, the chairman of the Democratic Freedom Party who met the previous central interlocutor, K C Pant, has expressed his willingness to meet Vohra.
Shah had held a series of parleys with Pant at the end of which he had expressed his 'disillusionment with the talks'.