Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called for a “serious and honest discussion” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a “burning point like Kashmir”.
Abu Dhabi [Dubai]: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called for “serious and honest discussions” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on “flashpoints like Kashmir”. In an interview with Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV, Sharif said Pakistan had learned its lesson after three wars with India and stressed that it now wants peace with its neighbour.
“My message to the Indian leadership and Prime Minister Modi is that let us sit at the table and have a serious and honest discussion to resolve burning issues like Kashmir. It is up to us to live peacefully and progress or fight each other and waste time and resources,” Sharif said. “We have had three wars with India and they have brought more misery, poverty and unemployment to the people,” Pakistan’s prime minister said in an interview with a Dubai-based Arabic news channel.
“We have learned our lesson, and we want to be at peace with India, if we are able to resolve our real issues,” Sharif said in an interview that aired on Monday.
Battling a severe economic crisis, Pakistan is also facing increasing incidents of terrorist attacks by the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), public discontent against the ruling regime due to the flour crisis and fuel shortages among others. A ceasefire with the country’s security forces ended late last year.
“India is our neighboring country, we are neighbours. Let us be very calm, even if we are not neighbours, we are there forever and it is up to us whether we live peacefully and progress or fight with each other and waste time and resources. It depends on us,” said Sharif in an interview with Al Arabiya.
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Sharif also brought up the issue of Kashmir and said, “Pakistan wants peace but whatever is going on in Kashmir should stop.”
In an interview uploaded on the @AlArabiya_shows Twitter handle on Monday, the Pakistani leader said that both countries have engineers, doctors and skilled workers. “We want to use these assets for prosperity and peace in the region so that both nations can develop.”
“Pakistan does not want to waste resources on bombs and ammunition. We are a nuclear power, armed to the teeth, and if, God forbid, war breaks out, who will live to tell what happened?” he said
In November last year, India had slammed Pakistan for raising the Kashmir issue during the UN talks, calling it an “attempt to peddle lies”.
“As we meet today to discuss UNSC reforms, Pakistan’s representative has again made an unnecessary reference to Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India, irrespective of what Pakistan’s representative believes,” Prateek Mathur, Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, said in a right of reply during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
He added, “Pakistan’s desperate attempts to lie and its bad habit of abusing the sanctity of multilateral forums deserve collective contempt and perhaps even sympathy.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari spoke about alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. India’s reaction to Pakistan’s claims came at an important meeting of the UN General Assembly of the United Nations Security Council.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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