Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday said the only way for Pakistan and India to move forward was through dialogue.

In a tweet, the prime minister said, “To move forward Pakistan and India must have a dialogue and resolve their conflicts including Kashmir.”

“The best way to alleviate poverty and uplift the people of the subcontinent is to resolve our differences through dialogue and start trading,” he added.

During his inaugural speech as the prime minister of Pakistan on Sunday, Imran said he had spoken to all of Pakistan’s neighbours about improving relations with them. “There is a need for peace and without it, we cannot improve the country’s situation,” he had said.

A day earlier, Pakistan government extended an olive branch to India, when newly appointed Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that he would pursue dialogue with neighbouring rival as a way forward.

“We need a continued and uninterrupted dialogue. This is our only way forward,” he had said. “We may have a different approach and line of thinking, but I want to see a change in how we behave,” he had added. “India and Pakistan have to move forward keeping realities before them.”

PM Imran also thanked former cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who travelled from India to Pakistan to attend his oath-taking ceremony. “I want to thank Sidhu for coming to Pakistan for my oath taking,” he wrote. “He was an ambassador of peace and was given amazing love and affection by people of Pakistan.”

He added, “Those in India who targeted him are doing a disservice to peace in the subcontinent, without peace our people cannot progress.”

The statement came two days after Indian media and right wing Indian activists lambasted Sidhu for attending the oath-taking ceremony of the new premier. Earlier in the day, a sedition case was filed against Sidhu for hugging Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa at Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.

According to Indian media reports, a lawyer in the Indian state of Bihar filed the case against Sidhu for “insulting the Indian Army”.

Separately, the prime minister termed the election of Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar a new beginning in the province. “Special attention will be paid on the socio-economic uplift of the backwards areas of the province,” said that premier while talking to newly elected Punjab chief minister, who called on him in Islamabad.

“The masses of Punjab have stood up on the call for new Pakistan,” the prime minister remarked and hoped that the newly elected chief minister would come up to the expectations of voters.

Published in Daily Times, August 22^nd 2018.