Spain’s king urges Catalan lawmakers to avoid ‘confrontation’
MADRID: Spain’s King Felipe VI in a Christmas speech on Sunday urged Catalan lawmakers to respect their region’s diversity and avoid another confrontation over independence.
Felipe’s remarks came three days after separatist parties, led by ousted president Carles Puigdemont, won an absolute majority of seats in a parliamentary vote.
The wealthy northeastern region’s newly elected Parliament must “face the problems that affect all Catalans, with respect to plurality and bearing in mind their responsibility to the common good,” the monarch said.
“The road cannot lead again to confrontation and exclusion, which as we already know generate nothing but discord, uncertainty and discouragement,” he said at his Madrid residence, flanked by Spanish and EU flags.
Spain’s central government called the election after sacking Puigdemont’s Cabinet, dissolving the Catalan Parliament and stripping the region of its treasured autonomy following an independence declaration on Oct. 27.
The declaration rattled a Europe already shaken by Brexit, and inflamed passions across Spain.
It followed a banned independence referendum on Oct. 1, which saw a brutal police crackdown that focused the world’s attention on the Catalan crisis.
Two days after the referendum, Felipe made a rare televised speech, condemning the separatists’ “unacceptable disloyalty.”
On Christmas Eve, he reiterated his call for unity, though his tone was more conciliatory.
He called on the region’s leaders to help “Catalonia’s society — diverse and plural as it is — to recover its serenity, stability and mutual respect, in such a way as to ensure that ideas... do not separate families and friends from each other.”
Spain is now “a mature democracy, where any citizen can ... defend, freely and democratically, his opinions and ideas; but not impose his ideas in a standoff with NEW DELHI: India is debating the real intent behind Pakistan allowing Kulbhushan Jadhav, a convicted Indian spy facing the death sentence in a Pakistani jail, to meet his mother and wife.
Jadhav’s mother Avanti Jadhav and wife Chetankul Jadhav, accompanied by the Indian Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh, met the former Indian navy officer in Islamabad on Monday afternoon.
“It has happened due to international pressure,” said Suman Sharma, a New Delhi-based foreign affairs expert.
“It is a tactical gesture by the Pakistan government before the next hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is hearing the case. Islamabad can argue in the ICJ that they are treating the case from the humanitarian points of view,” Sharma told Arab News.
Dr. Zakir Husain of the Indian Council of World Affairs, a New Delhi based think-tank, said: “The larger point of this meeting is more than humanitarian. Pakistan is sending a signal that it is willing to break the ice with India and hold talks with its eastern neighbor.”
Talking to Arab News, Husain underlined that “it’s now up to India how it responds to the Pakistani overtures. This comes just days after the Pakistani army chief’s announcement of his willingness to talk with India.”
However, there was a lot of curiosity in Mumbai, the city where Jadhav’s family lives.
“We are really excited about the meeting taking place in Islamabad,” said Subrato Mukherjee, an old friend of Jadhav in Mumbai.
Talking to Arab News, Mukherjee said that “last week a bike rally and human chain were organized in the city to extend support to Jadhav’s family and express our solidarity with the family.”
India does not accept the Pakistani version of the story that Jadav was arrested in Baluchistan province of Pakistan on March 3, 2016, and was acting as a spy to create disturbances in its territory.
New Delhi, however, claims that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he went to do some business after his retirement from the Indian Navy.
Jadhav’s case has created a frenzy in the Indian media with the majority calling Pakistan’s move “an optical illusion and choreographed exercise.”
“On the question of Pakistan, Indian media loses its balance. We lose objectivity and sense of proportion,” said Sharma.
“I feel the Jadhav case is a wonderful opportunity for both India and Pakistan to engage each other in dialogue. Had there been a regular mechanism of engagement between the two nations, we would not have had this kind of polarized debate and tension.” the rights of others,” the king said in his fourth Christmas speech since his accession to the throne.
Supporters of Catalan unity with Spain accuse their separatist rivals of creating a gulf pitting the proand anti-independence camps.