Dialogue is the only way for long standing issues
Pakistan desires a relationship with India based on sovereign equality and mutual respect. We seek resolution of disputes through a serious and comprehensive dialogue that covers all issues of concern. We were to meet on the sidelines of this UNGA Session to talk about all issues with India — India called off dialogue the third time for the Modi Government — each time on flimsy grounds. They preferred politics over peace. They used the pretext of stamps issued months ago, of a Kashmiri activist and depicting grave human rights violations, including pellet gun victims, as an excuse to back out from the talks.
Dialogue is the only way to address long standing issues that have long bedeviled South Asia, and prevented the region from realizing its true potential.
The unresolved Jammu and Kashmir dispute hinders the realization of the goal of durable peace between our two countries. For over seventy years now, it has remained on the agenda of the UN Security Council and a blot on the conscience of humanity. For seventy years the people of occupied Jammu & Kashmir have struggled for their rights of self-determination in the face of overwhelming oppression and gross violations of their fundamental human rights by the Indian occupation forces. There can be no lasting peace in South Asia without a just settlement of the Kashmir dispute based on the UN Security Council resolutions and the will of the Kashmiri people.
Pakistan welcomes the recently released report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report rightly lifts the veil from decades of obfuscation and chronicles the massive ongoing violations of human rights in Indian Occupied Kashmir. It vindicates our position.
Pakistan endorses the UN Report and calls for early institution of a Commission of Inquiry under UN auspices to investigate and fix responsibility. We will welcome the Commission to Azad Jammu & Kashmir, and hope that India too, will do the same. To divert the world's attention from its brutalities, India frequently violates the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Kashmir. Despite numerous violations Pakistan has acted with restraint. But if India does venture across the LOC, or acts upon its doctrine of "limited" war against Pakistan, it will evoke a strong and matching response.
Strategic stability in our region has been and continues to be undermined. This is evident in different ways-by introduction of destabilising weapon systems, pursuit of discriminatory approaches by certain states to supply advanced military hardware and sensitive technologies, and adoption of offensive force postures and doctrines, that imagine conflict beneath a nuclear threshold.
Under the circumstances, Pakistan has no option but to maintain a minimum credible deterrence. We have been advocating for many years now, a Strategic Restraint Regime for South Asia. Pakistan is ready to engage with India for meaningful confidence building, risk reduction and avoidance of arms race. Let me also reiterate Pakistan's continued support for strengthening of regional organizations as a platform for poverty alleviation and socio-economic uplift. The regional body for South Asia, SAARC has been rendered in effective due to the intransigence of one country. We remain fully committed to a functioning SAARC that can improve the lives of the people of the region.
Afghanistan and together with it, Pakistan, has suffered heavily at the hands of global power play, strategic miscalculations and cognitive dissonance.
That there is no military solution to the war in Afghanistan is now a foregone conclusion. It is time to act upon that conclusion. A negotiated settlement has assumed urgency in the face of the worrisome and growing presence of Daesh in Afghanistan. Pakistan will continue to lend its support to an Afghan owned and Afghan led process of peace and reconciliation. On the bilateral plane, our two countries have operationalized the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity. It lays down the blueprint for extensive engagements in all areas of common interests.
Pakistan has hosted the longest protracted refugee presence of modern times. Our role and sacrifices can perhaps be better appreciated when juxtaposed against the rising tide of antiimmigrant sentiments in nations, more resourceful and developed than ours, that have faced the brunt of fewer immigrants, over a shorter timescale.
Because of this protracted situation, Afghanistan's security has a direct spill over impact on our own security and stability. We look forward to the safe, dignified and voluntary return of Afghan refugees to their homeland.
For the past seventeen years, Pakistan at great cost of life and resources, has been combating the fires of terrorism and extremism. By the determined operations of our armed forces, and the full support of our people, Pakistan has turned the tide against terrorism. With the deployment of 200,000 troops, Pakistan has conducted the largest and most effective counter terrorism campaign in the world.
Pakistan continues to face terrorism that is financed, facilitated and orchestrated by our eastern neighbour. We wanted to sit with India to discuss all issues, including terrorism, that have created violence in our cities and towns, and have led to tens of thousands of casualties of innocent Pakistanis. Pakistan shall never forget the mass murder of more than 150 children in a Peshawar School, the terrible Mastung attack and many others that have links with terrorists supported by India.
It is also a matter of concern of the international community that India has sponsored terrorism and aggression against all its neigbours. The strongest antidote to the poison of terrorism is development that yields dividends. The vision of Belt and Road is a path-breaking initiative by a world leader of great sagacity and foresight to create a community of common destiny.