LAHORE, Jan 4: Speakers at a seminar on Friday urged the government to forthwith start a democratic process in the country to save it from the existing internal and external challenges including war threats by India.

Nawabzada Nasarullah Khan and Asma Jehangir were also among the speakers. The seminar was organized by the Democratic Lawyers Front on the Pak-India situation at a local hotel.

A group of lawyers took exception to remarks by Air Marshal Zafar Chaudhry (retired) that a Pakistani group might have been involved in the attack on Indian parliament to defame Islamabad. They objected to the remarks and some of them walked out in protest.

Mr Chaudhry was the first speaker and he was analyzing the impact of a war between the two nuclear powers on their people. He said war would be disastrous for both the countries and should therefore be avoided.

Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan who was the chief guest said the challenges being confronted by the country could only be faced if the nation was united and not by the present government alone.

He said the country was divided by the past dictators through non-party elections. There were countless political parties in India but none of them had ever talked against their state. But because of the lack of a democratic process here alliances had been formed against Pakistan.

The Nawabzada said only an elected government could face all internal and external threats to the country. The only deterrent to any war could be the democratic process in Pakistan, he said.

He said the nation was united during the 1965 war because the political parties had supported Gen Ayub Khan despite his violation of the sanctity of the ballot box. The nation was divided during the 1971 war and that was why the army could not defend even itself, he said.

The Nawabzada said only that country could fight with enemy which had the support of the people. If army started acting like a ruling party, it could be rejected like any “ruling party if it failed to deliver,” he said.

He said the Indian edge over Pakistan was that it never violated the sanctity of the ballot box. The present situation in the region was critical and peace here was dependent on the conditions in Afghanistan.

He disagreed with some earlier speakers that Pakistan should change its Kashmir policy. He said if Pakistan’s support to Kashmir was wrong, the two-nation theory and the accession of over 500 states in the undivided India were wrong too.

The Nawabzada said the Kashmir issue was deliberately created by the British rulers of India to permanently disturb peace in the region. The Kashmir dispute was the unfinished agenda of the great divide and the world community including Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had declared to allow the right to self-determination to Kashmiris.

He said it was an established fact that Indian forces had so far killed over 80,000 Kashmiris. Even the Asia Watch and the Amnesty International had recognized atrocities in the occupied Kashmir including the mass murders and grangrape of women. The overwhelming majority of the killed and tortured people had been Kashmiris, he said.

The Nawabzada said Pakistanis did not consider Kashmiris as a separate nation and that was why they had been giving them the right to vote for the Pakistani parliament and the Azad Kashmir Assembly. This status was not being enjoyed by any other refugees and “Kashmiris and Pakistanis “ are one nation,” he said.

He said India wanted to exploit the world community’s war against terrorism. It was hurling war threats by using the attack on its parliament as a pretext. It was blaming jihadi outfits in Pakistan for the attacks without agreeing to the demand by Islamabad to furnish evidence of their (outfits) involvement in the episode. It was India which was talking of war and not Pakistan, he said.

The Nawabzada criticized the US for its policies towards Pakistan and the Muslim world. He asked as to why the US and other world countries were not getting implemented UN resolutions on Afghanistan and Palestine. It had earlier abandoned Afghans who had fought with it to contain the USSR and would again do the same, he said.

Former Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairperson Asma Jehangir criticized Pakistan’s past foreign policy towards jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir and said it needed a shift because of the changed world situation.

The jihad policy was a “foreign policy,” and not the “domestic policy.” The military rulers had been saying that the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir were two different things and “there will be more wars if this policy is not changed,” she said.

Asma Jehangir said the American attack on Afghanistan and its presence there created fears in the region. The Pakistani government was taking dictations from America on all issues whereas it should look towards Saarc countries which “understand each other.”

She said Pakistan government had been demanding a broad-based government in Afghanistan, asking as to what it had been planning for Pakistan.

Ms Asma criticized the government for maligning all politicians and said it was not correct. No country could progress or overcome crises without politicians, she said.

She also objected to the Pakistan’s handling of the situation after India blamed the Lashkar-i-Taiba for the attack on its parliament.

Ms Asma objected to Pakistan’s demand of a joint investigation into the incident, asking what would be the reaction of Islamabad if New Delhi had asked for a joint investigation to locate “militant groups,” here. “We have not behaved like a dignified nation,” she said.

She said it was required to give power to the people to domesticize Pakistan’s foreign policy. “We will support the struggle of Kashmiris but we will not fight the war of militants. We should also talk of the rights of Kashmiris in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan,” she said.

Ms Asma said the Kashmir dispute should be resolved by using the bridge of friendship between Pakistan and India. “The rulers could not defend and run the country at the same time. Convene a national convention and decide how to run the country in consultation with civil society and politicians whom you look down upon,” she said.

The seminar was also addressed by S M Masood, Mehmood Akhtar Raja, Manzoor Gilani, Begum Tehmina Daultana and Shahid Bhatti.