ISLAMABAD: In a statement released on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) made it clear that any talks with India can only take place after the country reverses its “illegal action of August 5, 2019.”
This action, according to the PMO, was aimed at altering the demography of the Muslim-majority state of Indian-occupied Kashmir. The statement emphasised that “without India’s revocation of this step, negotiations are not possible.”
In ref. to PM Shehbaz Sharif’s interview to Al Arabiya, the spokesman of the PM Office has said the PM has consistently maintained that Pakistan & India must resolve their bilateral issues, especially the core issue of Jammu & Kashmir, through dialogue and peaceful means. 1/3
— Prime Minister’s Office (@PakPMO) January 17, 2023
This statement comes a day after Shehbaz Sharif called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to hold serious and sincere talks to resolve issues, including the ongoing conflict in Kashmir, and suggested the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leadership could play a key role in bringing India and Pakistan to the negotiating table.
Tensions rose high when India unilaterally revoked the autonomous status of its part of Kashmir later in 2019, which Sharif said resulted in “flagrant” human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.
Ever since, official talks between the two countries have been suspended, although there were some backdoor diplomacy attempts to resume negotiations — one brokered by the UAE in 2021.
“My message to the Indian leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is let’s sit down at the table and have serious and sincere talks to resolve our burning issues, like Kashmir,” Sharif said in an interview with Al Arabiya news channel on Tuesday.
He said he had taken up the issue with UAE’s president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in his recent visit to the Emirates.
“He’s a brother of Pakistan. He also has good relations with India. He can play a very important role to bring the two countries on the talking table,” Sharif said.
The two arch-rival nuclear powers have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947. Two of the wars were over Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region, which both nations claim. Each controls half of it.
The two neighbours got closer to a full-scale war in 2019 when the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) downed an intruding Indian MiG-21 aircraft and captured its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, after the plane crashed in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
