Agencies/Islamabad
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday said Pakistan will talk with Kashmiri leaders before initiating any dialogue with India, media reported.
“Pakistan will speak with Kashmiri leaders before it enters into dialogue with India,” Sharif said while attending a session of the Kashmir Council in Muzaffarabad, Dawn online reported.
“Pakistan itself is the biggest victim of terrorism so blaming its agencies for being involved in extremism is an utter lie,” the prime minister said.
He expressed satisfaction with the international community’s acknowledgment of India’s “biased attitude” towards its neighbour.
“It is our fundamental belief that the Kashmir issue should be resolved through dialogue. My government initiated dialogue with India but it cancelled the scheduled foreign secretary talks,” he said.
Nawaz also said that the international community must play its role in bringing India to the dialogue table over the Kashmir issue.
He said Pakistan wishes to resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue, adding that India could be brought to the table for talks with the help of international institutions.
“Before the dialogue with India, I have decided to engage with Kashmiri leaders,” he added.
Meanwhile, the military said that a Pakistani soldier was killed yesterday in firing by Indian troops in the disputed Kashmir region.
Recent exchanges of fire across the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir have killed at least 20 civilians and forced thousands to flee their homes.
A military statement said “Indian troops resorted to unprovoked firing” at the Line of Control in the Pandu sector near Muzaffarabad yesterday evening.
“A Pakistan Army solder embraced shahadat (martyrdom). Pakistani troops befittingly responded to Indian firing,” it added.
The neighbours have traded blame for the upsurge in firing and shelling which started on October 6.
India called off peace talks in August after Pakistan first consulted Kashmiri separatists, a move some saw as a sign of a tougher stance by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new right-wing government.
In a related development, on Wednesday, former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said India and Pakistan were very near to a framework agreement on the Kashmir issue through back-channel talks during the Congress-led regime, and suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should appoint a confidant for such talks.
Interacting with a select group of media persons in New Delhi about his forthcoming book titled Neither hawk, nor dove, Kasuri said the new governments in India and Pakistan can take forward the framework by giving it a new name-tag.
“Try hard as they may, they can’t change it. Both states know each other’s bottomline,” he said.
Kasuri said the book has a chapter on the four-point Kashmir framework. “We were very near (to agreement).”
Kasuri, who was Pakistan’s foreign minister 2002-07 said he had seen the negotiations on the framework from close quarters and witnessed the exchange of drafts.“It went on for three years,” he said.
Nawaz Sharif
