ISLAMABAD, Jan 30: Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said on Wednesday that India had no option but to hold talks with Pakistan for the resolution of all issues, including Kashmir.
War was no alternate to a dialogue as it would prove disastrous for both the countries, Mr Sattar said in his speech at the concluding ceremony of the 21st specialized diplomatic course at the Foreign Service Academy.
“We will have to enter into a dialogue as nobody in the world wants solution of outstanding issue through war,” he said.
The foreign minister said the concentration of a million troops on Pakistan’s borders was a blatant exercise in coercion and intimidation.
India, he said, was going against the global trend of resolving disputes through peaceful means.
He said Pakistan would maintain its principled stand on the Kashmir issue and would continue to persuade its friends and international community to play a role for peace.
Mr Sattar noted that the international community had also endorsed Pakistan’s policy of restraint and to seek resolution of all issues through negotiations.
“Peace in the region is inconceivable without resolution of the Kashmir issue,” he said.
Kashmir, he added, was not a question of territory but the question of implementation of an agreement reached between the two parties and later sanctified by the UN resolutions.
Had the partition plan been implemented, Pakistan and India could have lived peacefully, he said, adding that the partition plan was accepted by the two parties striving for independence but it was not implemented.
Outlining the broad parameters of Pakistan’s foreign policy and its fundamentals, he said economic interests of the state had become the basic factor in determining the foreign policy.
The foreign minister said the countries like Pakistan buried under the burden of debt had to face tremendous pressures and arm-twisting from the donors countries.
He urged the budding diplomats never to say that they were not economists. The promotion of economic interests should be accorded priority in the present day era, he added.
Mr Sattar regretted that Pakistan suffered serious economic mismanagement and squandering of revenues which undermined its foreign policy as well as security.
