KABACHI: A pan Islamic forum, perhaps for the first ime, has moved closer to expressing as much concern over the plight of Muslims in India, especially Jammu and Kashmir, as it has traditionally expressed over the Plight of their brethren in Palestine and elsewhere. This is far from a call for hard action but such inching gains as have been wrought by Pakistan’s efforts could gradually accumulate as the issues of Kashmir and of Indian minorities have been slated for the agenda of the Pan-Islamic conferences to follow.
At the conclusion of the meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference Foreign Ministers here on April 29, Pakistan’s Finance Minister, Farooq Leghari, who chaired the conference, expressed his gratification at its categorical and vigorous support to the suffering people of Kashmir.
As has been reported earlier, the entre draft resolution on Kashmir, taking note as it did of the report presented by the OIC Secretary General and endorsing his recommendations, was incorporated in the final communiqué of the conference without amendments. Further, while expressing the conference’s deep concern over the killing of the Muslims and the aggression against their holy places in Palestine, India, Bosnia, Herzegoyina, Jammu and Kashmir and in many other places in the world, the conference also condemned the destruction of the historic Babri Masjid by “extremist Hindus” and called on the Government of India to reconstruct the mosque in the original site.
Although it did not find a mention in the final communiqué the resolution on Babri Masjid did contain a further appeal for the removal of the makeshift temple” which had been put up in the Babri Masjid site, if the communiqué’s tenor is harsher than ever before, it still falls well short of the maximalist position that could have been taken. Such a position would have been implicit if the communiqué had accepted the conclusions drawn in the Secretary General’s report (which were a near exact reflection of Pakistan’s position on the history and current status of the Kashmir issue) or asked for greater urgency on the recommendations. A senior Pakistani official, however, claimed that a maximalist position was deliberately avoided so that support could be garnered for the: plea for a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the issue.
With the stress in the resolution on Kashmir (and therefore in the passages of the final communiqué relating to this issue) being placed on a “negotiated settlement,” it was claimed that there had been lite opposition other than from Syria. The Pakistani official said, that the avoidance this time of the rhetorical flourishes and maximalist postures was a characteristic which pertained to other portions of the communiqué besides those relating to Kashmir, An attempt had been made to Clarify the issues so that diplomatic efforts could be focused, he claimed, He also said that the resolutions adopted at this conference were for once not out of synch with the trends in global diplomacy. Whether it was on Bosnia, Palestine, the Iraq Kuwait conflict or most others, the conference did not strike for an approach al variance with the approaches favored by broader for a such as the U.N. This, he claimed, was primarily due to the efforts of the non Arabs who had wanted the conference to focus on the future rather than dwelling on the past. His interpretation that this shift of focus reflected the “extraordinary” demographic changes which had occurred in the Islamic world and the reduction of the Arabs to a minority in the ranks of the Ummah (Muslim world) would, however, have to be borne out by events.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 7, 1993
