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Friday March 29, 2024

The irony

August 07, 2020

This refers to the news story ‘Ahsan Iqbal criticizes Kashmir policy’ (Aug 6). The PTI government may not be adopting a robust and pro active policy on Kashmir but one would request the PML-N leader to apprise the readers of the policy his government followed during the PML-N’s full five years’ rule earlier. The PML-N did not even have a full time foreign minister to forge international relations and carry out astute diplomacy with world leaders.

During his prime minister’s visit to Delhi in 2014 to attend the inauguration ceremony of the PM Modi’s government, his prime minister chose to keep mum about Kashmir and did not even talk about the issue with the media. The moot point is that his government paid scant attention to evolving a sound foreign policy but now his advice is just the opposite. The incumbent government has brought the dormant Kashmir issue and the atrocities being perpetrated therein to world attention. In any case, Ahsan Iqbal was the federal minister for planning & development in the PML-N government and his views on foreign policy and diplomacy are of no relevance.

Shoaib A Majeed

Karachi