Twenty seven days before New Delhi announced the appointment of an interlocutor to initiate dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir, a United States diplomat visited Srinagar and met three state ministers and civil society activists, the Indian Express reported on Saturday. Quoting sources the report said the diplomat wanted “to know the ground situation and understand the feasibility of a dialogue”.
As per the report 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.