Farooq Abdullah welcomes opening of Kartarpur corridor

National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah Sunday expressed happiness over the opening of Kartarpur corridor between India and Pakistan and said he hoped the spirit would replicate itself in Jammu and Kashmir.

He said the initiative would help the Sikh community to realize their long pending demand of paying obeisance at one of their holiest places located across the border.

"The invitation from Pakistan to Indian leaders and legislators on the opening ceremony of Kartarpur corridor will bequeath both India and Pakistan a chance to further the cause of brotherhood and amity," he said.

"The initiative will help the people from across the border to get wind of cultural similarities between the two nations," Abdullah, an MP from Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, said.

The NC president said Jammu and Kashmir appealed for such initiatives, like the opening of borders and greater people to people contact across the border.

"We in Jammu and Kashmir suffer immensely due to the animosity between India and Pakistan. The need of the hour calls for replicating such initiatives as the opening of Kartarpur corridor in our state," he said.

He said his party, for past seventy years, has been vouching for affable Indo-Pak relations as they will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the peace-craving state.

"We have had four wars since 1947 and we were not able to achieve anything except destruction. I have time and again said that constituency of peace loving people in the two nations far exceeds those who want war.

"Peace loving people should impress upon their respective governments to bridge the divide and rekindle the process of interaction between the two countries which was initiated by late (former PM A B) Vajpayee ji and then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and later by PM Manmohan Singh and his counterpart in Pakistan," he said.

Welcoming the brigade commander level meeting between India and Pakistan at a border crossing in Poonch sector, he said such initiatives will bump up the confidence-building measures and help the populace across the LoC to live in peace.

"The NC has been a strong votary of 2003 ceasefire agreement. The meeting ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of 2003 cease-fire. I wish this step towards rapprochement acts as a precursor to more such friendly gestures," he said.

(With inputs from agencies.)