India has realised Kashmir solution must reflect Kashmiris’ wishes: Pakistan

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday said that the only acceptable solution of the Kashmir issue would be the one reflecting the wishes of Kashmiris.

Briefing journalists, Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said the Line of Control (LoC) was a problem and it could not be the solution. Jilani said the Indian leadership had realised that the Kashmir issue needed to be addressed according to the wishes of Kashmiris. He described it as one of the great achievements by President Musharraf during his visit to India.

The spokesman said the president had told the Indian leadership that the Kashmir issue could not be swept under the carpet. “The president also urged the Indian leadership to improve human rights in the Held Kashmir, release all political prisoners and reduce troops in the territory,” he said.

Jilani said the Kashmir issue got maximum time during a one-on-one meeting between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and during the delegation-level talks. He said both the leaders had agreed to speed up the process of resolving the Kashmir issue because it had been on the table for “a very, very long time”. To a question, he said Pakistan felt that the withdrawal of Indian troops from Held Kashmir would minimise Kashmiris’ sufferings.

To another question, Jilani said that by soft borders President Musharraf meant increased interaction between the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

He said an Indian team would be in Pakistan on May 7 to discuss the Kishanganga project, which India was executing in violation of the Indus Basin Treaty. He added that if there was no agreement, this would be yet another case to be referred to the World Bank. On the Baglihar dam, the spokesman said Pakistan had told India that the best course of action available to India was to cooperate with the World Bank. He said India must stop construction on the dam if it was sincere in resolving the issue bilaterally.

Jilani rejected reports about the “so-called Spring Operation” along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and said that Pakistani security agencies took action whenever there was information about foreign militants in that area. He said there was no involvement of foreign agencies or forces in the action.

The spokesman said the abducted official of the Pakistan embassy in Baghdad, Malik Muhammad Javed, was safe and efforts were being made to secure his early release. Jilani rejected the International Crisis Group report about Pakistan, calling it a bundle of fiction.

He said the report did not mention the measures Pakistan had taken for the elimination of extremism and sectarianism.

He said the government had banned a large number of groups involved in sectarianism and the graph of sectarianism related incidents had dropped significantly.

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