Pakistani delegates being greeted at Wagah on May 31. (AP)

New Delhi, June 12: Shimla’s cool climate was meant to have promoted accord between South Asia’s journalists and MPs when they met under the aegis of the South Asia Free Media Association just under a fortnight ago.

Instead, Indian MPs disagreed so fundamentally with clauses on Jammu and Kashmir in the draft declaration that the conference almost turned into a battleground.

Said Trinamul MP Dinesh Trivedi: “It seemed like a design to many of us that the Pakistani parliamentarians were pushing clauses on Jammu and Kashmir.

“We thought we were meeting in an atmosphere of peace and friendship. But when I heard the resolutions, I made it very clear that there could be no negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir. The people of India will not allow it.”

It all began when the free media association, a journalists’ NGO funded by the Norwegian government, invited nearly 200 people across South Asia to a three-day talkshop in Shimla. The salubrious environs of the Cecil hotel were supposed to help these people break bread with each other.

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee opened the meeting. Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee closed it. In between, MPs and journalists attended formal sessions on promoting connectivity, tourism, trade etc. They also exchanged notes and made friends.

However, on June 3, when the draft declaration was being discussed, Trivedi said he found offending clauses on Jammu and Kashmir and India’s security relations with Pakistan and Bangladesh. He immediately got up to bring this to the notice of the chair.

One resolution spoke of the “exploration of all options for a final settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir question, agreeable to the peoples of J&K, India and Pakistan…”

Another resolution, which described the “intrusive nature of the international system and the great damage done to its people and especially Kashmir”, argued that it was “imperative the region develop its own security and conflict resolution mechanism. It is recommended the dialogue between India and Pakistan must be irreversible and time-bound so that the people reap the fruits of it.”

The language, tone and tenor of the resolutions shocked the Indian delegates, Trivedi said. But no one seemed aware how this had happened. Pranab was in the next room as the row unfolded, Trivedi said, so he must have known what was going on.

All the offending references were later deleted. “The Pakistan MPs were unhappy, said they had come all the way to Shimla but achieved nothing,” Trivedi said.

However, there was at least one Pakistan MP who asked questions, even to journalists. Minoo Bhandara, also the owner of Murree Brewery, the only brewery in Pakistan, wanted to know who was paying for the free lunch.

“If you had noticed what I have been saying,” said Imtiaz Alam, secretary general of the free media association, based in Lahore, “we always thank the Norwegian government for its help”.