RTC declaration calls for time-frame for Kashmir solution
Pakistan Times National News Desk

ISLAMABAD: The Kashmiri leaders attending RTC on Kashmir issue Monday noted with serious concern the lack on progress on Kashmir issue in the ongoing composite dialogue.

They said the current dialogue process must be expedited with a view to resolving the core issue in some time-frame. This has been stated in the Islamabad Declaration on Kashmir, issued at the conclusion of the RTC.

The Kashmiri leaders declared that they would accept negotiated settlement of the issue provided it was in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

They also took note of the serious violations of human rights in Indian-held Kashmir and urged the international community to seek an end to the repression by pressurizing India.

UN Resolutions on Kashmir Intact

Meanwhile, Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said Kashmir was an issue on which the entire nation of Pakistan was united. “It is an issue on which Muslims across the world demand justice,” he added. He was speaking at the Round Table Conference, held in Islamabad on Monday.

He said Pakistan was engaging India in the hope that they would come round to solving Kashmir in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

“There is no abandonment of the resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir. They are still on the table. Up to this day, they constitute the requisite legal framework,” he added.

Khan said: “We cannot conceive of a solution without the participation of Kashmiris in dialogue. They are the principal party, along with Pakistan and India.”

Trio of sincerity, flexibility, courage

He underlined that the trio of sincerity, flexibility, and courage - propounded by President Prevez Musharraf would be mutual, matching and reciprocal. The spokesman called for intensifying a debate on solutions in the media, academia, in the corporate world, and in world chancelleries.

“This is a chance to make the world even more attentive and sensitive to Kashmir. We have to make it part of the international discourse until the problem is resolved. At present, the route is bilateral, but the backdrop is international. Both move in unison,” he added.

The spokesman said, there is no appeasement, we are only engaging India in the hope that they would come round to solving Kashmir in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

He said, the experience of the past years in handling the composite dialogue has been mixed. Confidence building has moved at a brisk pace. “The most enduring CBM in the last 14 months has been the ceasefire along the LOC. There has been repeated engagement on Kashmir. We have yet to produce results. Our leadership — President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz — have said that confidence building and dialogue have to move in tandem.”

He said, President has in fact given a doctrine for the resolution of the dispute on a win-win basis. “We cannot conceive of a solution without the participation of Kashmiris in dialogue,” he said.

Masood said, the trio of sincerity, flexibility, and courage — propounded by the President — will be mutual, matching and reciprocal. Unilateralism in this context will be an oxymoron, Khan remarked.●