KATHMANDU: Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said here last week that her country was only opposed to giving Kashmir people a choice to become.
Addressing a Press conference at the end of her three-day visit to the Himalayan Kingdom, she said the partition in 1947 had been carried out on the premise that the Muslim majority areas would join Pakistan while the Hindu majority areas would go to India, Both would then take care of the minorities that would still be left out in the two Countries.
Bhutto maintained that both India and Pakistan must stick to the Original framework of partition and agree to a plebiscite in Kashmir.
She said if a third option were given to Kashmiris, then the Sikhs, too, might come forward and ask for it. “I think both sides (India and Parisian) prefer not to open the Pandora’s but should stick to the original framework of partition,” she added.
The Pakistan Prime Minister accused India of not being prepared to talk on” ‘meaningful terms with her country on Kashmir, “I still think that if Indians are prepared to come to the negotiating table for meaningful, purposeful and substantial talks on Kashmir, we can improve the situation,” she said.
Ms. Bhutto said differing interpretations of the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan had precluded them from getting around to a solution of the Kashmir dispute, “Simla Agreement has provided the basis of the most durable peace that the subcontinent has ever known,” she said adding “Let us solve that problem, let us do it multilaterally. Let’s find a political solution.”
The 1972 accord signed by the late Zulfkar Ali Bhutto, Ms. Bhutto’s father, with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, provides for India and Pakistan to bilaterally resolve the Kashmir dispute. But, Ms. Bhutto claimed, India instead took that it “could veto all resolutions” to the dispute, As a result “the issue went out of hands because the people (of Kashmir) rose up.” she said.
Ms. Bhutto dubbed as “misinformation” the India Press reports saying that Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) was operating from freedom is Nepal, That’s why they plant such stories. Why should we embarrass Nepal.”
Article extracted from this publication >> June 10, 1994
