KARACHI, March 30: Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, Amanullah Khan, on Sunday warned against declaring the Line of Control as the permanent border between India and Pakistan, saying that would put Pakistan in great danger.

He was addressing a seminar on “Peace in South Asia and National Liberation of Kashmir” organized by the JKLF’s Sindh chapter. He presented his Kashmir formula and appealed to the leaders of Pakistani political parties present at the seminar to popularize it.

Mr Khan’s formula calls for third party intervention to declare Kashmir a democratic, federal and secular state having friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. It says that after 15 years of sovereign rule, the people of Kashmir should be provided an opportunity of plebiscite to decide whether they want to be an independent country or live with India or Pakistan.

Mr Khan said the formula had been designed on the principle of give and take, which meant Kashmir should be left to Kashmiris and India and Pakistan should have a peaceful and prosperous future spending their resources not on defence but on the welfare of their people.

The veteran Kashmiri leader said when he discussed the formula with Stephen Cohen, an important US think-tank, his immediate response was that the formula would not be acceptable to Pakistan and India, as “occupiers lack farsightedness and broad-mindedness”.

He said Kashmir had become a question of national ego for both Pakistan and India, and if left to them the issue might never be resolved as in the past 55 years they had managed to solve only the Indus water issue. Therefore, he said, the formula ensured it should not injure the national ego of the parties involved and pave way for a third party consisting of countries friendly to both India and pakistan.

“The third party can only be a committee of friendly and reliable countries. The role cannot be entrusted to the US nor can it be given to the UN; the US has committed an imperialist aggression against Iraq and the UN has let itself be reduced to a mere onlooker,” he said.

Mr Khan criticized the Pakistani government for responding to the superpowers from a “ meek and weak position” on the Kashmir issue. He said a Saudi government advisor on Kashmir affairs had confided to him that Gen Pervez Musharraf had agreed to make the “LoC” into a permanent border between Pakistan and India. He said the information was ‘confirmed’ when Sardar Abdul Qayyum, president of Azad Kashmir, was heard saying there was no harm in considering the proposal instead of jeopardizing Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

Mr Khan wondered why Pakistani rulers were so shy of speaking against the US and so ready to bow down on one phone call, while there were Iran and North Korea that had openly defied the US and they still existed. “Pakistan can teach a lesson to India, provided the rulers display boldness and courage”, he said and warned if Kashmir became a permanent part of India, the existence of Pakistan would be in danger.

Mairaj Muhammad Khan, secretary general of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, in his speech, stressed that the Kashmir cause must not be sacrificed for other interests. He added that the Kashmir problem had not been resolved because of ‘our pro-Us foreign policy’.

Taj Haider, central information secretary of the PPP, criticized the ‘policy of allowing religio-political activists to enter Occupied Kashmir which, he said, had been strengthening the Indian stand. Justice (retd) Abdul Majid Mali said that the same mistake committed in the past, of ignoring the Kashmiris while forming the Kashmir policy, was being repeated.

Dr Ghulam Quadir Magsi, chief of the Jiye Sindh Taraaqi Pasand Party, said he heartily supported the struggle of the Kashmiris for national emancipation. He said fundamentalist violence had done harm to the cause of the Kashmiris.

Abdul Khaliq Junejo, chief of the Jiye Sindh Mohaz, said that for a peaceful South Asia, the Kashmir issue had to be resolved. Other speakers were Salahuddin Gundapur, Yasin Azad, Sardar Mushtaq, Sardar Aftab, javed Ayub, Sardar javed Hanif, Aziz Ahmad and Tauqir Gilani. Baba Najmi recited a poem. All the speakers were unanimous in their condemnation of US aggression against Iraq.