BERLIN: The chairman of the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Kashmir, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, visited on Saturday head offices of

the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Koerber Foundation where he called for the international community’s support for early resolution of the Kashmir issue.

According to a press statement, he briefed the two organisations’ heads of international and Asian affairs on the genesis of the Kashmir dispute and said the international community should facilitate its early resolution because durable peace in South Asia depended on good relations between India and Pakistan.

Talking to Marc Frings, head for South and Central Asian affairs at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank of the German ruling party (CDU), Maulana Fazl said that apprehensions about a proxy war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the US and Nato forces from there could be traced back to many unresolved issues between the two nuclear-armed countries, the Kashmir dispute being the most important one.

He said the policy adopted by the US and its allies after the 9/11 attacks, under which their forces invaded Afghanistan, had failed because instead of being eliminated terrorism had spread to several countries.

“It is time for the West to look into where it went wrong and reframe its policies and alliances for world peace and better relations with the Muslim world and other countries,” he said.

Talking to the executive director for international affairs at the Koerber Foundation, Dr Thomas Paulsen, Maulana Fazl said that freedom movements based on principles of justice, fair play and human rights had been affected adversely in the aftermath of 9/11.

He said the people of Pakistan had been suffering since the 80s because of the Afghan war and they had paid a heavy price for the cause of a free world.

“It is now the responsibility of the international community to pay them back by supporting the just cause of the people of Kashmir and by putting pressure on India to restart the stalled talks with Pakistan for resolution of all outstanding issues to ensure a durable peace in the region,” he said.

Published in Dawn December 14th , 2014