‘Pakistan wants to settle all issues with India’

islamabad — Pakistan is seeking dialogue with India and wants to resolve all outstanding matters, including Kashmir issue, through talks, a senior Pakistani leader has said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s adviser Sartaj Aziz said Islamabad wanted to restore peace in the South Asian region and would continue extending “political, moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiris until they achieve freedom from India”.

According to The News, Sartaj said “India will have to give freedom to Kashmiris”.

He said that Indian atrocities in the Kashmir Valley had reached the peak after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani’s assassination last by the Indian security forces. He launched a campaign on social media to inform the Kashmiri youth about Indian barbarism and cruelties on the innocent people, and exhorted them to rise for liberation from India, Sartaj noted.

Sartaj said that Kashmir was a international dispute as acknowledged by the United Nations in its resolutions and it should be resolved through negotiations.

The adviser said the Indian security forces had killed 150 Kashmiri people and injured some 20,000 others in the recent spate of state violence. The troops used pellet guns, besides committing other human rights violations, which were highlighted by Pakistan at the international forums, he added.

He said India was propagating that there was no issue in Kashmir, but the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other international human rights organisations had asked it if there was no issue then why the people of the state were persistently holding protests and were being subjected to worst human rights violations.

To a question, the adviser said the 56-member OIC always discussed the Kashmir issue in its meetings and adopted resolutions supporting Kashmiris in their struggle for right to self-determination. He would attend the OIC’s Contact Group meeting and highlight the Kashmir issue, Sartaj added. — IANS, APP