Hameed Shaheen
ISLAMABAD: Veteran Kashmiri leader Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan has urged upon the United States and the European Union to appoint a special envoy on Kashmir to help search out a peaceful negotiated settlement of Jammu and Kashmir dispute so that durable peace and security return to South Asia. He appreciated the appointment of OIC special envoy on Kashmir hoping India must cooperate.
“They (USA, UK, France, Germany) have already appointed their special envoys on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the regional situation demands that they should also engagingly concentrate on the urgency of resolving the six decade old dispute of Jammu and Kashmir. They should name an agreed special envoy on Kashmir should be appointed or the scope of operation of their existing special envoys on the region should be extended to include Kashmir”, he told Pakistan Observer in an exclusive interview in his Rawalpindi Mujahid Manzil residence on Thursday morning.
Kashmiris, he explained, have already opted for a peaceful freedom movement despite facing over 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary occupying their homes, towns, villages, school/college compounds, open spaces, hospitals, forest lands etc. Alien occupation is unacceptable to them. “It is now the strategic obligation on the part of the international community to help revive the stalled peace process/composite dialogue between Pakistan and India with Kashmir atop agenda. If the cancerous dispute (of Kashmir) is left unattended by the global community, the unsolved situation would help induction of durable peace in the region. How can a body be deemed cured, if its core cancerous part is unattended by diplomatic doctors”, he questioned responding a query from Pakistan Observer.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir, he explained, are the principal party to this dispute. “Their association with the Pakistan-India dialogue process is necessary. A durable solution needs accommodation of aspirations of the Kashmiri people, he added.
Summing up current regional affairs survey in response to another question the ex-president/prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir said that the global community needs to acknowledge the full-dress role of Pakistan and to advance liberal economic and diplomatic assistance to it at this hour of time. On Azad Kashmir he said that things have entered legal phase, needing no external comments at this stage. His political advisor Col Rtd Muhammad Farooque was also present during interview hour.
Posted on 15 Oct 2009 by
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