Daily Times

LAHORE: Former foreign affairs minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri has suggested a peaceful resistence movement to resolve the complex issue of the disputed state of Jammu Kashmir.

“Pakistan has not changed its principled stance on Kashmir, but the government must make effective diplomatic efforts for the resolution of the decades-old issue of the disputed state,” he said while addressing a seminar on Kashmir issue organised by the Lahore Press Club.

Eminent author and intellectual Malick Abdul Hakeem Kashmiri, political scientist Prof Dr Rasul Bakhsh Raees, and Lahore Press Club president Muhammad Shahbaz Mian also highlighted different perspectives as well as current and historic events associated with the issue of the disputed state. Addressing the seminar, Kasuri shared some facts, narrated in his book – Neither a Hawk, Nor a Dove – about diplomacy during his term as the foreign affairs minister. The book is an insider’s account of Pakistan’s foreign relations including details of the Kashmir framework. To a question, he said that what he had achieved (as foreign affairs minister) should serve as the foundation for any future dialogue between Pakistan and India. Avoiding even minor media coverage, he said that robust backchannel diplomacy had helped Pakistan and India to achieve a secret document outlining a political settlement of the disputed state. “Our (Kashmir) framework is still the only workable solution, and it took three years and so many drafts were exchanged,” he said. “It was pretty much finished, only one or two little things needed ironing out, and after that we would have presented it to the governments, to the public, to the media,” he told the audience.

On the ocassion, Abdul Hakeem Kashmiri informed the audience that Kashmiri people have no issue with each other but with the policies of the rulers and policymakers of Pakistan. “Pakistan will have to be more cautious about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridors (CPEC), as Gilgit Baltistan is associated with the Jammu Kashmir issue,” he said. He said that the government in Azad Jammu Kashmir should be made powerful so that it can present and defend the issue itself at all international forums. “We will have to give a “base camp” status to Azad Jammu Kashmir in a real sense instead,” he said, adding that the Kashmiri people must be given decision making powers and ways to live peacefully.