ISLAMABAD: Advisor to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz Monday reminded India to recognize that the core issue of Kashmir could not be resolved by bullets.
“It requires a political solution, through serious negotiations between India and Pakistan,” he said in a statement in response to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech.
Sartaj said Modi was only trying to divert world attention from the grim tragedy that had been unfolding in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) over the past five weeks.
He said India is a large country, in fact the second largest in the world and this must be acknowledged, but a large country did not automatically become a great country, specially when it unleashed such brute force against innocent citizens to suppress their right to protest or when it deliberately used pellet guns to permanently destroy the eyesight of over 100 youth.
Thousands of unarmed youth were protesting every day for their right of self- determination, he said, adding more than 70 innocent Kashmiris had been killed and more than 6000 injured. Sartaj said there was constant curfew and complete media blackout for the past 37 days. These events had nothing to do with terrorism.
“It is an indigenous movement for self-determination, a right promised to the Kashmiris by the UN Security Council. At this time, the contrast between the Indian Occupied Kashmir and the Azad Jammu and Kashmir could not be more stark,” a press release of the Foreign Office quoted him as saying.
The Advisor further said Prime Minister Modi’s reference to Balochistan, which is an integral part of Pakistan, only proved Pakistan’s contention that India through its main intelligence agency RAW, had been fomenting terrorism in Balochistan. This, Sartaj said, was also confirmed by the public confession of RAW’s active service Naval Officer, Kulbhushan Yadav in March this year.
