SIALKOT: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Barrister Sultan Mahmood (also former AJK prime minister) said on Monday border tensions between Pakistan and India were gradually coming down due to positive foreign diplomacy by Pakistan.

He said this at the Kashmir Conference at Anwar Club Auditorium in Sialkot. The former AJK prime minister said the Indian aggression highlighted the Kashmir issue globally much to the disadvantage of India.

Later, he told reporters the world appreciated Pakistan’s peace talks offer to India to deescalate tensions along the Line of Control and Sialkot Working Boundary. He said that Pakistan only responded to India after its aircraft breached its air space. Wars could never be solution to any problems, and that Pakistan wanted durable peace in this region, especially with India. He said that India must respond positively to Pakistan’s peace offers as people on either side wanted peace.

He said the US, England, Saudi Arabia, China and other countries played their pivotal role in bringing normalcy between Pakistan and India but India-held Kashmir was under more repressive tactics of the Indian army. He said Kashmir was unfinished agenda of Partition and it was Pakistan’s jugular vein. Kashmir and Pakistan were like one soul in two hearts.

He said that observance of the Kashmir Solidarity Day commemorated the strong and unflinching resolve of the Kashmiris to achieve the inalienable right to self-determination from Indian subjugation. Mr Mehmood also addressed lawyers at the Pasrur Bar Association in Pasrur where he said ruthless killings, pellet injuries to children and infants, rapes and torture continued unabated to suppress the spirit and courage of Kashmiris.

He said since 1947, the number of tortures, molestations and killings perpetrated by the Indian occupation forces against innocent Kashmiris had become a case study.

Former AJK minister Sahibzada Hamid Raza and former MLA-AJK Chaudhry Maqbul Ahmed also spoke.

President Pasrur Bar Association Ghulam Mustafa Bhatti said peace could never be promoted in South Asia without solving the prolonged issue of Kashmir.

PTI Central Punjab President Umer Dar urged the world community to influence India to halt human rights violations, custodial killings and genocide of the oppressed Kashmiri people.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2019