‘Pakistan not guarantor but facilitator in Afghan peace process’

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday made it clear that Pakistan was not a guarantor but only a facilitator in the Afghan peace process.

Talking to reporters here, Qureshi said the entire onus of the Afghan peace process could not be put on Pakistan, as Pakistan had been maintaining all along that it was a shared responsibility of all stakeholders to take the peace process forward. He said Prime Minister Imran Khan wanted to have a meeting with the Taliban to woo them for the intra-Afghan dialogue. He said Pakistan was moving forward in good faith.

“The convergence was seen on the Afghan issue during a meeting between PM Imran and the US President Donald Trump,” he added. To a question, he said India was neither ready to hold talks bilaterally with Pakistan on the Kashmir dispute nor did it accept the third party mediation.

Qureshi said Kashmir was a disputed territory and any demographic changes in the occupied valley will not be acceptable to Pakistan as well as to the Kashmiri people.

Days after urgency to resolve the unrest in the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) was raised in a high-profile meeting between Prime Minister Imran Khan and US President Donald Trump in Washington, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi lauded the European parliamentarians for highlighting the issue in Europe.

“Successive reports by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UK Parliament’s All Parties Parliamentary Kashmir Group (APPKG) report, as well as the hearing by European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights in Brussels lent credence to Pakistan’s stance on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and helped raise awareness in the international community about the horrendous human rights situation in the IHK,” said Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. He was speaking to a 10-member delegation of European parliamentarians which called on him and discussed the deteriorating human rights situation in the IHK.

The delegation comprises MEP Richard Corbett, leader of the Labour Party in Europe MEP Irina Von Wiese, Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and MP Nazia Rehman. The delegation is on an 8-day visit to Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, says a statement issued by the office of the Foreign Minister.

Highlighting the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, the foreign minister appreciated the efforts of Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora and of those involved in raising the issue of gross human rights violations in the IHK in Europe and beyond.

“The foreign minister stressed the need for consistent efforts to build upon the current momentum and sensitize the international community to the deplorable situation of human rights in the IHK,” said the statement.

He also reaffirmed Pakistan’s principled political, diplomatic and moral support to Kashmiris in their just struggle for the right to self-determination.