Imran meets Amnestyhead, Khalilzad ahead of UNGA session

NEW YORK: Prime Minister Imran Khan began his United States trip with a series of high-level meetings on Sunday, during which he met Amnesty International Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy who was brokering the now-scuppered peace deal with the Afghan Taliban.

Amnesty International’s Secretary General called on Prime Minister Khan and discussed the worsening human rights situation in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir as a result of an excruciating clampdown by Indian occupying authorities, Foreign Office Spokesman Dr Mohammad Faisal wrote in a tweet. Later, Khan also held a 40-minute meeting with Khalilzad. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, attended the meeting, according to Geo News.

While inaugurating the Torkham border crossing last week, the Prime Minister had said he would discuss the resumption of peace talks between the Taliban and the US in his meeting on Monday (today) with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the 74th UN General Assembly session.

On Saturday, Farooq Kathwari, the founder of Kashmir Study Group (KSG), a non-governmental body devoted to developing ideas that can lead to a resolution of the decades-old Kashmir conflict, called on Prime Minister Khan hours after his arrival in New York.

During the meeting, the Prime Minister urged Kathwari, a Srinagar-born Kashmiri-American, to further highlight the grave situation resulting from India’s illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and its blatant human rights violations so as to expose the real face of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to the world, according to an official press release.

Present at the meeting were Foreign Minister Qureshi, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce Abdul Razzak Dawood, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Naeem-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s envoy Maleeha Lodhi, and Ambassador to the United States Asad Majeed Khan as well as other senior officials.

Kathwari had also served as member for United States President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans.Earlier, Foreign Minister Qureshi told reporters that the Prime Minister wanted to listen to Kashmiris from both parts of Kashmir ahead of his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 27.