LAHORE, March 7: Former foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad Khan has said that the only viable and durable solution to the Kashmir dispute lies in the implementation of the United Nation Security Council resolutions giving the right of self determination to the people of Kashmir.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Kashmir Action Committee held at a hotel here on Wednesday with its president Justice Sharif Hussain Bukhari (retired) in the chair. He said that the four-point formula suggested by President Pervez Musharraf was not new as it was based on the proposals of a US-based Kashmir Study Group, headed by Mushtaq Kathiawari, and amounted to maintaining the status quo in Kashmir.

“It presents no permanent solution of the Kashmir dispute but aims at making the Line of Control a soft border,” he said, adding that President Musharraf was giving his options for the Kashmir solution beyond UN resolutions. Both Pakistan and India had accepted to honour the resolutions and there was no other compact formula or “tailor-made solution” available to address the Kashmir issue, he said.

He said that any road-map which deviated from the principles of the resolutions would be “arbitrary and bound to fail”. He said that it was for the first time in the 60 years history of Pakistan that the government was drifting away from the UN resolutions by proposing demilitarising of Kashmir, suggesting autonomous entities of the state, three in India and two in Pakistan, self governance and joint supervision. These proposals had been supported by two leaders only, APHC chairman Maulvi Umar Farooq in held Kashmir and the Mujahid-i-Awwal in Azad Kashmir.

On the other hand, he said, India had shown no change in its position in response to the “unending unilateral gestures of flexibility”. Only recently India’s foreign minister reiterated that Kashmir was India’s integral part and could not be negotiated. Only last week India’s defence minister said that India would not withdraw its forces from Kashmir.

He said that if President Musharraf was genuinely seeking peace with India he must in the first instance strengthen his own position in his own country by building a national consensus on his new Kashmir policy by involving major political stakeholders. This would require transparency and domestic confidence-building through a genuine debate in parliament, he said.

Similarly, he said, all political stakeholders would have to rise above their differences and vested interests and unite at a single platform and evolve a consensus in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The consensus should be on how to sustain and pursue Pakistan’s traditional Kashmir policy while remaining sensitive to the current regional and global dynamics.

He said that it was unfortunate that proxy wars were now being fought on our soil. Pakistan was the only country in the world which was fighting a war against its own people. — Reporter