MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 7: A Pakistani religious leader on Monday has called upon President Gen Pervez Musharraf not to give too many concessions to India on Kashmir and instead stick to the national stand on the issue.
We have lots of concerns about President Musharraf’s policy on Kashmir. He is floating proposals after proposals, but there is not even the slightest change or flexibility in India’s position,” Markaz Ahle Sunnat Pakistan chief Allama Ahmed Ali Kasuri said at the Thuri Camp here on Monday.
Mr Kasuri, who led a four-member delegation to the quake-devastated AJK capital to distribute relief among survivors, urged Gen Musharraf to stick to Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir that the United Nations resolutions should be implemented for a peaceful settlement of the longstanding issue.
“The UN resolutions envisage right to self-determination for the Kashmiris exercised through a free, fair and impartial plebiscite to determine the future status of Kashmir in accordance with the wishes of its people,” he said.
Mr Kasuri, who is also a member of the provincial executive committee for sectarian harmony in Punjab, said that around 200 religious scholars of the province at a recent meeting pledged to promote sectarian harmony at the national level and inter-faith dialogue at the international level.
However, he said, the government should review its conduct in this regard and come out with a practical policy acceptable to all.
He said President Musharraf was regularly highlighting a fact at the international level that establishment of peace and eradication of terrorism were not possible without addressing the root causes of the problems.
“It is absolutely correct. But similarly you cannot eradicate sectarianism in the country until religious scholars and government’s representatives sit together and determine its causes and find out their solution,” he said.
Answering a question, he said President Musharraf’s term of “moderation” was ambiguous in the same way as the term “terrorism” was at the international level.
“The president should call for following Islam in its true spirit instead of blindly imitating the West,” he said.
He said: “I would request the president that instead of Mustafa Kamal he should make Prophet Muhammad Mustafa (SAW) his ideal.”
Mr Kasuri also expressed fears about the expected visit of US President George W Bush to Pakistan sometime next month.
“Of many of our concerns attached to the tour, the major one relates to our national hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan,” he said, adding that many Pakistanis had serious apprehensions that the government could hand him over to the US to please the visiting leader.
