South Asia needs a comprehensive approach for peace to prevail in the region, Pakistan said amid raging insurgency in Afghanistan to its west and turmoil in Indian controlled Kashmir to its east.
“Peace cannot be compartmentalized or segregated,” Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, visiting Washington along with Member National Assembly Dr. Shezra Mansab Khan, as Pakistan’s special envoys, said.
Sayed, speaking to reporters at the Pakistani embassy, particularly argued that it is a regional imperative that Kabul and Kashmir both have peace through international backing.
The United States, he said, has a high-stakes role to play in ensuring that the region of such consequence has peace, after New Delhi “ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan in order to divert international focus from its repression in Jammu and Kashmir dispute.”
Parliamentarians with White House adviser Peter Lavoy
Such a role stems from Washington’s commitment to human rights and longstanding historical relations with the region, the lawmakers argued.
Recent violence in Kashmir – where around 100 civilians have been killed in a widespread indigenous uprising, more than 150 blinded with pellet guns and thousands others injured – comes at a time when Pakistan is leading a large counterterrorims operation against Taliban in areas bordering Afghanistan.
Islamabad and New Delhi have traded allegations of stoking terrorism in the region. Pakistan says Kashmir is a UN-recognized disputed territory and India has been occupying the territory through force. New Delhi claims that Pakistan backs what it calls cross-border terrorism.
Senator Sayed even raised the specter of Islamabad moving its troops to the eastern border if tensions with India spiral out of control over Kashmir.
“We will have to shift forces fromt the Afghan borderr to the eastern front if tensions are heightened” to the level of a conflict.
Dr. Shezra Khan, a member of the Parliament, said terrorism has no religion and said during their meetings with US officials, the two lawmakers handed over a dossier on India’s crimes against humanity in the form of state repression in Kashmir.
The two legislators emphasized that Kashmiris are a primary party to the dispute.
Earlier, the special envoys of Prime Minister met with President Obama’s Special Assistant Dr. Peter Lavoy at the White House.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Jalil Abbas Jilani has been accompanying the lawmakers in their interaction with US officials and think tank experts.
A Pakistani embassy statement said the special envoys of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif underscored that turning of a blind eye to India’s jingoistic and hegemonistic policies in the region risked great danger. “They stressed that Jammu and
Kashmir was the core issue and without its resolution there could never be a lasting peace in the region.”
“Senator Mushahid Hussain and Dr. Shezra Mansab Ali emphasized that the United States should respond to the present situation in IoK in line with its rich political & ideological ethos and respect for human rights and national freedoms.
“They further demanded implementation of UNSC resolutions on Kashmir that called for a right to free and fair plebiscite to ascertain will of the Kashmiris on the pattern of East Timor.”
The two parliamentarrians categorically rejected Indian allegations against Pakistan of supporting terrorism and highlighted that it was not humanly possible to breach the fence that India had erected throughout the Line of Control.
