Daily Times
May 22, 2021
NEW YORK: Pakistan will negotiate to find a solution of the decades-old Kashmir dispute, but will not barter away the inalienable rights of Kashmiri people, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a gathering of Pakistani-Americans on Friday.
He said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was deeply committed to the just cause of the Kashmiris and that his stand on the issue was unequivocal.
“We will talk respectfully, but will not make a deal (on Kashmir),” the foreign minister told a cheering audience. He was answering a question about concerns being voiced over reported back-channel engagement with India on the decades-old dispute. He also said that Pakistan was open to dialogue with India aimed at peacefully resolve all outstanding issues, including Kashmir. Past regimes in Pakistan, Qureshi said had put the Kashmir issue on back burner, but the present government had revived it, citing PM Imran Khan’s forceful address to the UN General Assembly in 2
Biden Must Revive ‘Six Plus Two Group’ to Successfully Exit Afghanistan
Active multilateral engagement with regional and international stakeholders is the most reliable course of action to achieve peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Last week, Taliban deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar published an open letter, calling on President Joe Biden to honor the 2020 Doha agreement reached by his predecessor Donald Trump and withdraw international troops from Afghanistan before the May deadline.
This diplomatic posturing comes after a Taliban delegation visit to Iran in late January, where Mullah Baradar met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani to discuss “relations between both nations as well as the political and security situation in Afghanistan and the region.”