PAK ADMITS ITS FAILURE
NEW YORK: Pakistan PM Imran Khan admitted on Tuesday to having been disappointed by the lack of response by the international commuity over the Kashmir issue.
NEWYORK: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan warned that war was possible over Kashmir even as he admitted for the first time on Tuesday to having been disappointed by the lack of response to his campaign to bring international pressure on India over Kashmir.
“There is a potential that two nuclear-armed countries will come face to face at some stage,” he said. Speaking to reporters at a news briefing at the United Nations, Khan added: “To be absolutely frank, I am a bit disappointed by the international community.” He claimed that the reaction would have been different and more urgent had it been eight million Europeans or the Jewish people or Americans who had been put under siege.
“There is no pressure on Narendra Modi to lift the siege,” Khan said, referring to the restrictions in place in Kashmir since the nullification of Article 370 on August 5 and 6, which stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special status, and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories, J&K and Ladakh.
And, he said, he believes the other reason for the lack of international alarm has to do with the fact that “people look upon India as a market of 1 billion people and sadly that’s what is happening — material comes over the human”.
Khan and his delegation have raised Kashmir at every forum and meeting and, by his own admission, done everything possible. He listed the world leaders he has spoken to: US’s Donald Trump, UK’s Boris Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
Only Trump responded to his call with an offer of mediation. On Tuesday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi by his side, Trump said that the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers can resolve the dispute once they get down to it; he, notably, did not offer his services. Just hours before, though, Trump had said he stands ready to help if both sides want him to; and clearly, India doesn’t.
No other world leaders have publicly aligned themselves with Trump yet, and that has disappointed Khan, who said, however, he felt encouraged that Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan spoke of Kashmir in his UNGA speech.
“In order for the Kashmiri people to look at a safe future together with their Pakistani and Indian neighbors, it is imperative to solve the problem through dialogue and on the basis of justice and equity, but not through collision,” Erdogan said.
He went on to call for lifting the restrictions, but did not seek either third-party mediation or demanded a rollback of, the change in the constitutional status of Kashmir, both key demands of Khan’s “Mission Kashmir”. He plans to continue raising the issue and will be speaking about it in his speech at the UNGA on Friday.