LAHORE, June 2: “No solution to any of the outstanding issues between India and Pakistan, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, can work if it erodes the sovereignty, security, unity and territorial integrity of either country,” said the visiting BJP President Lal Krishna Advani and Indian opposition leader here on Thursday evening.
“The emergence of India and Pakistan as two separate, sovereign and independent states is an unalterable reality of history,” he continued. Mr Advani was speaking at a reception held by the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) at a hotel in Lahore on Thursday. He said he was stating his party’s position to clear “some misconceptions and propaganda about what the BJP thinks of Pakistan.”
Any such propaganda, he said, had no legs as it was the BJP-led government which started the ongoing peace process in 1999, advanced it throughout its six years in power and was supporting it even in the opposition, he claimed.
Sharing his views on the peace process, Mr Advani said both Indians and Pakistanis had to recognize and respect each other’s desire for sovereignty, security, prosperity, unity and territorial integrity of their respective countries.
The right-wing leader and vociferous proponent of the Hindutva, called for adopting peaceful means to settle all issues and developing a consensus between the ruling establishments and oppositions in both countries for arriving at a mutually acceptable solution.
He also urged that progress on all outstanding issues should be in tandem, without letting slow progress on any one issue become a hurdle in the search for a faster progress on other issues.
He said all Pakistanis should know that neither the BJP nor any section of India’s polity wished ill for Pakistan. “Let there be no place for anti-Indianism in Pakistan, and no place for anti-Pakistanism in India,” he said.
He parried all questions about “specifics” just “to avoid” leaving a negative impact on the peace process. “I shall not go into specifics as my thoughts may influence the direction of the ongoing peace process. My role is to keep its direction in a positive way forward,” he replied to a question.
To another question about the demolition of the Babari Masjid in 1992, he said he had termed the day of the incident as the saddest day in his life. About anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat and elsewhere in India, he said such problems were experienced in each country, emphasizing that states which wished to progress had to live in the present and move on from the past.
Questioned about his vision for South Asia in the next five years, he said he wanted to see Pakistan as a prosperous and developed country. About slashing defence expenses to invest the saved money for bringing down the high poverty rate, he said every state desired to allocate maximum resources for the uplift of its people, however, it could not ignore its security.
