Vice President Venkaiah Naidu backs Centre on dialogue with Pak, Hurriyat

Jammu: Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday backed union government’s proposal over talks with Pakistan and the Hurriyat Conference, saying India is willing to have dialogue with anyone but the initiative must be reciprocated.
“We want to have good relations with all, including Pakistan. We don’t have any problem in talking with our neighbours, including immediate neighbour (Pakistan) but they (neighbour) also have to reciprocate in same manner,” he said while addressing a gathering of scientists at Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM), Jammu.
The remark comes just days after Home minister Rajnath Singh said the government was ready to hold dialogue with the Hurriyat Conference leadership and Pakistan.
Terming peace a prerequisite for progress and development, Naidu said that in the growing world of liberalization, privatization and globalization, nobody affords isolation.
“When the entire world is progressing, other parts of country are progressing, why Jammu and Kashmir should lag behind. We should put this question to ourselves, to find out the answer,” he said. “The health and wealth are interlinked, healthy state leads to wealthy states and here health means ‘peace, law and order, harmony and overall development. It’s up to the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide whether they want to live like this (present situation) or want to live in peace,” the Vice-President said.
Appealed to people to give peace a chance, he said: “I want to ask people to focus on peace because peace and prosperity go hand in hand, without peace there cannot be progress.”