MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 30: AJK People’s Party on Friday demanded that the military government should reconcile with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto “so that she could as usual play an active and constructive role in national politics and thus steer the country out of the present crisis.”

“People’s Party is the only political organization of the country having its roots in the masses. It has in the past driven the country out of crisis and only it can do the same in the present set of circumstances,” said AJKPP Secretary-General Chaudhry Latif Akbar, at a function held here to mark the party’s foundation day.

He said the PP was the party of the downtrodden and was determined to ameliorate the lot of the people and work for the development of the country in accordance with its revolutionary manifesto.

He asked the military government to quash all the cases against Ms Bhutto, which he said were fabricated by the previous regime out of personal vendetta.

The government, he said, should facilitate the return of the PPP chairperson without any hindrance and delay.

Regarding the statements by Ms Bhutto on Kashmir in India, Mr Akbar asserted that some papers had misquoted her while some had misconstrued her statements.

“Kashmir issue was the basis of the People’s Party’s inception and late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto vowed to fight for one thousand years for its liberation. How come the daughter of late Bhutto say anything against the noble struggle of the Kashmiris?”

Mr Akbar alleged that vested interests, jealous over the unflinching support of the people of Pakistan to Ms Bhutto, were engaged in propaganda against her.

However, the AJKPP leader made it clear that his party earnestly wished that the control and command of the liberation movement in occupied Kashmir should remain in the hands of the Kashmiris.

“We oppose outsiders (non-Kashmiris) hijacking the freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir,” he said, warning that if the (control of the liberation) movement went into the hands of non-Kashmiris, it might suffer an irreparable loss in the near future like that of Afghanistan.