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NEW YORK Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi is demanding an international inquiry to investigate the recent killings of Kashmiris by Indian security forces.
In his address to the OIC contact group on Jammu and Kashmir on Monday, Mr Qureshi said the dialogue process between India and Pakistan should re-start and welcomed the confidence building measures taken by India.
The group meets on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York and since the Musharraf days Pakistan uses this forum to highlight the Kashmir issue.
Previously, Pakistani leaders used the UN General Assembly for highlighting the issue but the Musharraf regime changed this practice and President Asif Ali Zardari further diluted Pakistan's stance on Kashmir by making only a passing reference to the dispute in his speech which focussed on a host of other issues. Although he mentioned the UN resolution on Palestine, the Kashmir resolution found no place in his speech.
Foreign Minister Qureshi, perhaps as a move to do away with the possible adverse affects of the president's omission, consulted leaders from both Azad and occupied Kashmir before delivering his speech to the OIC contact group.
He said that while Pakistan welcomed the CBMs, they were not a substitute for a real settlement of a dispute once described by Pakistan as the core issue.
Mr Qureshi said Kashmiris had been subjected to prolonged economic blockade and their lives and properties had been attacked.
He said the recent incidents in Kashmir were a reflection of an indigenous struggle of the Kashmiri people for independence.
Mr Qureshi noted that in spite of the passage of more than 60 years when the Kashmir issue was taken to the United Nations by India, the problem persisted.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir continue to demand their basic right to self-determination; a right promised to them by the international community in the form of UN Security Council Resolutions.
He noted that the brutal murder of two innocent women in Shopian in May this year at the hands of the Indian security forces had triggered strong protests by the Kashmiris.
All this calls for a high level impartial inquiry into the matter.
