Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that Pakistan desires peace with India but it was evident that unless the Kashmir dispute is resolved, there will be no durable peace between the two countries.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was delivering an opening statement as chair of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers at the OIC Annual Coordination Meeting in New York.
The Bilawal Bhutto said, “We are prepared to resume a sincere dialogue with India for a peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. However, the onus is on India to create a conducive environment for such a dialogue. It must rescind its unilateral and illegal measures instituted since August 5, 2019 and halt its human rights violations in IIOJK.”
Bilawal said, “Kashmir is our common cause. Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan are bound irrevocably by geography, faith, history and culture. Kashmir is Pakistan and Pakistan is Kashmir.”
“Jammu and Kashmir was forcibly occupied by India. The Security Council decided that the people of Jammu and Kashmir must be enabled to exercise their recognized right to self-determination through the UN-supervised plebiscite.”
“Since 5 August 2019, India has taken unilateral and illegal measures to undermine the internally recognized ‘disputed’ status of Jammu and Kashmir. It has increased its military deployments there to 900,000 troops and resorted to a brutal campaign of repression, including extra-judicial and custodial killing of Kashmiris; abduction of 15,000 young Kashmiri boys, many of whom were tortured; incarceration of the entire Kashmiri leadership, and the burning of villages and neighborhoods as collective punishment. This campaign of oppression is turbo-charged by the ideology of Hindutva and hatred of Muslims. The organization, Genocide Watch, has warned of the possibility of genocide in occupied Kashmir.”
“After three years, India’s campaign of colonial annexation has not succeeded. It will never succeed. With the will of Almighty Allah, the people of Jammu and Kashmir will win their heroic struggle for freedom and self-determination.”
The minister vowed that Pakistan will continue to extend its full political, diplomatic and moral support to their freedom struggle. He said the Islamic world must evolve collective and concerted responses to the political, economic, climate and other challenges facing the world today.
In 1945, the Islamic countries were unable to express, advocate or defend the vital interests of their peoples in the creation of the post-war world order, he reminded.
