NEW DELHI: India loaged 2 protest with Pakistan over Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s “inflamatory” statement on Kashmir, calling it “tantamount to an incitement to violence.”
Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner Shafgat Kakakhel was summoned to the foreign office in the morning and told that Bhutto’s recent statement in Azad Kashmir violated the Shimla agreement which prohibited use of hostile propaganda.
Bhutto said it was “‘obligatory’” for Pakistan to support “its Kashmiri brethren in their struggle for self-determination.
Bhutto also said Pakistan would not compromise its “‘principled stand” for a plebiscite in the Kashmir valley at any cost.
An external affairs ministry spokesman said at a press briefing that Bhutto’s statement constituted a distorted presentation of the situation in Kashmir.
“In their totality, these remarks can’t be seen as being conducive to the building of good neighborly relations,” the spokesman said.
Also, her recent statements with their “emotive and inflammatory rhetoric are tantamount to an incitement to violence,” he stressed.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 23, 1990
