ISLAMABAD: The situation arising out of the Sept 18 terrorist attack at Uri in held Kashmir showed further signs of gravity on Monday when a number of senators asked the government to convene a joint sitting of parliament to discuss Pakistan-India relations.

At one point during the discussion on a motion regarding Pakistan-India ties on the opening day of the current session of the upper house of parliament, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani expressed the hope that the government would give serious consideration to this proposal.

Mr Rabbani criticised the trend of convening multiparty conferences on key issues which he said were tantamount to a “negation of parliament”.

Earlier, winding up the debate, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz claimed that Indian efforts to isolate Pakistan diplomatically had received a severe setback.

Aziz says Kashmir issue can only be resolved through a ‘comprehensive dialogue process’

He said that about 56 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the human rights council of the United Nations and other global bodies had supported Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir.

Mr Aziz said the government had written to world leaders to highlight the grave situation in India-held Kashmir and handed them dossiers containing complete picture of ground realities in the Valley.

The UN human rights body has been requested to send a fact-finding mission to the Valley, he added.

He said Indian occupation forces had killed 120 innocent Kashmiris since July 8, and blinded dozens more by their indiscriminate use of pellet guns.

He underlined that the resolution of the Kashmir issue was imperative for a sustainable peace in South Asia, adding that it could only be resolved through a ‘comprehensive dialogue process’.

The adviser rebuffed Indian claims over Balochis­tan, saying there were no similarities between the situation in India-held Kashmir and the restive province.

Talking about the Uri attack, he said Islamabad was ready to extend all possible support to the investigation into the incident, but asked that it be conducted by an international body.

Foreign Office slammed

In the National Assembly, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief whip Shireen Mazari said that India was on the verge of declaring war on Pakistan, but the Foreign Office seemed to be unaware of this imminent danger.

Speaking on a point of order regarding recent Indian posturing, Ms Mazari observed that “no one less than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi threatened to cancel the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), but we have not seen a befitting response from here”.

“To me, the cancellation of the treaty will be a declaration of war,” she said.

According to Dr Mazari, if somebody believed that the World Bank was the guarantor of the treaty and would come to Pakistan’s rescue, they should understand that the bank had only acted as a facilitator and could hardly do anything if India unilaterally disbanded the agreement.

The voluble PTI lawmaker asked what would happen if tomorrow India decided to withdraw from the IWT on its own and what the possible response from Pakistan would be.

These were queries that warranted a response from the prime minister himself, Dr Mazari said. She asked that at a time when China was standing firmly with Pakistan, the Russians were conducting joint military exercises and Turkey was offering its support on the Kashmir issue, what was stopping the PML-N government from forcefully confronting Mr Modi.

Jamaat-i-Islami lawmaker Sahibzada Tariqullah said that ideally, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should have taken parliament into confidence before speaking at the UN General Assembly.

He said that the prime minister should come to the house and make a policy statement on the issue of Kashmir vis-à-vis what the Indian government was up to.

Defending his government, PML-N’s Talal Chaudhry praised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for raising the issue to a level where, he claimed, the whole world was reverberating with the cause of Kashmir. He said this was a time to shun political differences and stand squarely behind the government.

He thanked PTI leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi and PPP’s Hina Rabbani Khar for appreciating PM Sharif’s speech on the Kashmir issue.

Earlier, Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi declined suggestions from Leader of the Opposition Syed Khurshid Shah and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab, who had asked for the agenda of the day to be suspended in favour of a discussion on the Kashmir issue.

Monday was also a rare occasion in the lower house, as it dispensed with nearly all the legislative business that was placed before it.

Apart from the Hindu Marriage Bill and certain other amendments, the house passed a bill against Benami or anonymous real estate transactions. According to the bill’s statement of objects and reasons, “this is being introduced to deal with the problem of tax evasion and black money, especially in the real estate sector, and to target transactions that are carried out in other people’s names.”

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2016