ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Pome Minister Benazir Bhutto under severe domestic pressure after the diplomatic debacle over Kashmir in Geneva sought to put up a brave front and said her government may raise the issue again at the United Nations in New York.

We intend now considering moving the United Nations because the UN is again an international platform Bhutto said in her first comments after Pakistan was compelled to withdraw its draft resolution on Kashmir before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

We believe that so long as India refuses to take tangible steps to make bilateral talks meaningful we must internationalize the issue she said.

As criticism of her governments Kashmir policy especially by her arch-rival Nawaz Sharif mounts the National Assembly Kashmir Committee chairman Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan has called 3 special meeting of the committee on March 20 to decide whether to resign or not in the wake of the Geneva fiasco and demanded action against foreign ministry officials. Claiming that Islamabad had now internationalized the Kashmir issue in a manner that had not been witnessed in the last three decades the Prime Minister said they (India) committed to us on the day of the resolution (in Geneva) through Iran that they would allow Muslim diplomas into Kashmir the fact that they are backtracking now will put India in the dock once again. Since Islamabad’s decision to defer the UNHRC draft resolution on March 9 at the request of request of China Iran and 15 other countries the Bhutto regime had been under pressure from the

Opposition led by the PMI (N) chief Nawaz Sharif which had described the move as the biggest diplomatic fiasco in the history of Pakistan and an unprecedented foreign policy disaster. i am sorry the Oppositions attitude is not in national interest.

The Opposition leader of the Indian Parliament (Atal Behari Vajpayee) was at Geneva to support the Indian Government and our Opposition leader (Nawaz Sharif) declined to go as my special envoy to present our case in different parts of the world.

Article extracted from this publication >> March 18, 1994