New Delhi: Three weeks before the Government of India appointed Dineshwar Sharma as the Kashmir Interlocutor, a United States diplomat had visied Srinagar and had met three state ministers and civil society members, reported the Indian Express.
According to the report, the visiting diplomat wanted to know the ground situation and the feasibility of the dialogue.
On September 27, Joshua Goldberg, political unit chief at the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in Washington DC, visited Srinagar along with David Arulanantham, an official from the US Embassy in New Delhi.
Sources said Goldberg and David stayed for a night and met three ministers in the Mehbooba Mufti government, human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz, Khurram Parvez of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and two journalists.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis had arrived in India a day earlier — the first cabinet-level visit to India under the Trump administration.
Sources said Goldberg was interested to “know the ground situation and viability of a reach out from Delhi, a dialogue process”.
“He was, in diplomatic style, enquiring about the scope for dialogue and whether Kashmiris would welcome dialogue,’’ one among those who met Goldberg told The Indian Express.
“He also wanted to know the ground situation, especially after last year’s agitation and spurt in militant recruitment.”
