AsiaNet-Pakistan Premier Editorial Content and Press Release Distribution Service
New York, February 03, 2023 (PPI-OT):Ambassador of Pakistan to the US, Masood Khan has said that Pakistan is willing to engage with India in the interest of de-escalating the tensions in their relations. Ambassador Masood Khan in a media interview in New York said if peace continues to fail, especially over the Kashmir dispute, the consequences could be disastrous for both nuclear-armed South Asian countries (Pakistan and India) as well as the international community.
Masood Khan, who also served as President of Azad Kashmir, said that a “precarious situation” still exists along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, as long as diplomatic endeavours are not successful in resolving the decades-old dispute. “There could be accidents, there could be miscalculation, and the sole point is Kashmir,” he said. “It’s about Kashmir. It’s an unfinished agenda from the partition of India and Pakistan after the British left. So, what is diplomacy for if it doesn’t invest time and energy resolving such hot issues that affect the destiny of millions of people?”
Ambassador Masood Khan acknowledged that, before talks could be held, “there would be conditions” put forth by both sides. Echoing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Masood Khan said that, for Pakistan, this means “that the actions that were taken in August 2019, should be held in abeyance,” a call he said has been echoed by those within Kashmir itself, where activists have accused New Delhi of instituting media lockdowns, conducting arbitrary arrests and attempting to change the demographics of the overwhelmingly majority-Muslim region of more than 12 million people by allowing non-residents to purchase properties there.
He recounted these allegations, describing Jammu and Kashmir as an effective “mass prison.” As such, he argued that, without addressing these matters ahead of time, “if we resumed talks, this would be an inadvertent legitimization of India’s actions in 2019, so the hesitation stems from there.”
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