MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas Khan has said that resolution of the Kashmir dispute in line with the wishes and aspirations of people was key to improving bilateral relationship between India and Pakistan however he suggested that Kashmiri leadership should be taken into confidence before any bilateral talks.
In a statement issued here on Saturday by the public relations department, Tanveer, while referring to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s talks offer to his Indian counterpart, said that talks with India, at any level, would be meaningless unless India roll backs its August 05 actions.
While referring to Indian rulers’ track record of backtracking from their commitments, he said that the UN resolutions provide a comprehensive road map to settle the dispute peacefully but India had always broken the promises and refused to implement the UN resolutions on Kashmir.
The PM said that Kashmiri leadership was not against Indo-Pak relations but the revival of ties with India should be linked with the normalization of situation in Kashmir and the ultimate resolution of the issue.
Terming Kashmir as an unfinished agenda of partition, he said the Kashmir issue was all about the life and death of millions of Kashmiri people, and Pakistan, he said, was the ultimate destination of Kashmiris.
Citing the Kashmiris’ decades-long struggle, the AJK PM said, “Kashmiris have declared Pakistan as their destination even much before the creation of Pakistan.”
The people of Kashmir, he said, were still struggling to achieve this long-cherished goal set by their ancestors in 1947.
The AJK PM said India has always tried to sabotage the Kashmiris’ struggle under the guise of dialogue.
He said India has miserably failed to suppress Kashmiris’ struggle for the right to self-determination and despite oppression and suppression Kashmiri people have refused to accept India’s illegal and forcible occupation of their motherland.
He said the Kashmir issue can be resolved only by giving its people their right to self -determination.
He said that many formulas and suggestions were given in the recent past to resolve the lingering dispute but they couldn’t yield any desired results.
“Our suggestion is that Kashmiris, who have rendered matchless sacrifices, should be taken into confidence before entering into a dialogue with India”, the AJK PM said, adding that resumption of talks with India without Kashmiris would be nothing but a futile exercise.
