ISLAMABAD, March 1: Chief of Jamaat-i-Islami and parliamentary leader of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, on Saturday said Islamabad should resume reconciliatory talks with New Delhi rather than submitting to the US dictates.

He was delivering a lecture at the Foreign Office. Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and Secretary Riaz Khokhar among other officials attended the lecture which was followed by a question-answer session.

Qazi however stressed upon India to show flexibility in its attitude in the interest of regional security and revival of good neighbourly relations with Pakistan by recognizing Kashmir as a disputed territory.

He said the Muslim world could defend its national security only if the member countries stood united. He said Iran had demonstrated how a country could safeguard its independence and sovereignty without making any compromises.

He reminded that the very weapons on the pretext of whose destruction the US was planning to attack Iraq were also available with Israel, India and Pakistan in the shape of deterrence. This being the case, he asked, who can guarantee that a similar pretext would not be used to attack Pakistan at some future date.

He also asked Islamabad to cast its vote in the UN Security Council against a war on Iraq and to take a unified stand along with France, Germany, Russia and other countries.

Pakistan, Qazi said, would be isolating herself in the comity of nations by adopting the slogan of “Pakistan first”. It should follow the strong stance that Saudi Prince Abdullah, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad and the Iranian president had adopted, he suggested.

The MMA leader said the elements of national security and sovereignty should be cornerstones of the country’s foreign policy to affectively safeguard our independence.

He regretted that a worst kind of terrorism was being unleashed in the name of war on terrorism against Iraq. More regrettable, he said, was the indecision of Muslim states on adopting a unified policy to defend themselves against the enemy who wanted to destroy them one by one.

Referring to the international Islamic movements, the Jamaat chief said future of the Muslim world very much depended on the success of those movements that in no way could be overlooked in the foreign policies framing.

He assured that the MMA and Jamaat would continue to play their due role in providing guidelines to the national foreign policy makers.