Maulana Abbas Ansari, chairman of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, hopes the new government in New Delhi will continue to talk to the separatist conglomerate to find an amicable solution to the Jammu and Kashmir crisis.
Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani held two rounds of talks with a Hurriyat delegation in January and March.
A third round of talks was scheduled to be held in the next couple of weeks.
Ansari told rediff.com from his home in Srinagar that he regretted the defeat of the National Democratic Alliance govenment.
"We would have liked the old government to continue because they had initiated a procees. We had two rounds of talks with them and we had made considerable progress. Now the whole thing will have to start all over again," he said.
"I have heard Congress President Sonia Gandhi's statement that the new government will continue to hold talks with Pakistan in its bid to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries including that of Kashmir. She said it was the Congress party which wanted to initiate the talks and the Government of India did it at its behest. The people of Kashmir want to live in peace and we hope that the change in government will not hamper the dialogue that was started by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee," he said.
Maulana Ansari stressed there was greater urgency to handle the Kashmir problem now than ever before because of the threat of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. "It is unfortunate that whenever some steps are initiated to find a solution to the Kashmir problem something happens. When things were moving in the right direction there comes a change in the government in New Delhi.Well, that is what democracy is all about," he said.
"The Hurriyat will have to wait for sometime until the new government takes over and a new home minister assumes charge. The new prime minister -- hopefully, Mrs Sonia Gandhi -- will give direction to the talks before a Hurriyat delegation travels to Delhi for talks," a senior Congress leader told rediff.com on Friday morning.