Islamabad, July 6: In a major policy shift, the Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK) Prime Minister has advised Pakistan government not to link ongoing negotiations with India to resolution of the Kashmir issue, saying this is not the right time as Islamabad’s position is “quite weak” due to “internal vulnerabilities”.
Raja Farooq Haider suggested that Pakistan should first resolve “small irritants and controversial issues” before finally sorting out the “core issue of Kashmir.”
He told ‘The News’ daily that Pakistan and India should maintain status quo on Kashmir for “some time.”
He said he believed that India and Pakistan “should resolve other issues before taking up Kashmir.”
It would be “wiser for Pakistan to wait for the right time to restart negotiations” on the Kashmir issue, Haider said.
He explained that he was giving this advice because he

believed “this was not the right time for Pakistan to press for a Kashmir settlement.”
At the moment, Pakistan is facing a “formidable security challenge from the militants” and is not in a position to effectively fight the case of Kashmir, he added.
Haider said that his comments did not mean a “reversal of Pakistan’s traditional stand on Kashmir, as many emotional people might instantly try to infer.”
“What I am trying to suggest is that this is not the right time to negotiate Kashmir with the Indians as Islamabad’s position is obviously quite weak because of its internal vulnerabilities,” he said.
Asked about former military ruler Pervez Musharraf’s four-point proposal to resolve the Kashmir issue, Haider said no Kashmiri would have accepted it.
Haider backed the proposal to give the status of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) to India and to allow the country to use Pakistani territory as a transit route for trade, including with Afghanistan.
He also strongly backed India’s inclusion in the Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline project.
However, he contended that the Pakistani media is not giving importance to the current protest in Jammu and Kashmir.

UJC snubs Haider
Reacting sharply to the PaK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider’s statement, the United Jihad Council has termed it (Haider’s) ‘short sightedness and mean mentality’.
 In a statement issued from PaK capital Muzaffarabad, UJC spokesman said, “It does not behove the prime minister of PaK to issue such a statement at this crucial time when Kashmiris had with the sacrifices of their lives drawn the international attention to the resolution of Kashmir issue.”
 He said Haider’s statement is a contradiction of the traditional policy of Pakistan on Kashmir issue for which it fought three full-scale and several other small wars with India. “Kashmiris have been offering supreme sacrifices of their life, honour and property for the past 65 years and it is not yet known how many more sacrifices they will have to offer to achieve the goal of freedom,” he said.
 The spokesman termed Haider’s statement as cruel joke with the sentiments and sacrifices of people of Jammu and Kashmir living on the either side of border. “This is an open fraud and deception with the freedom movement of Kashmir,” he said.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 6 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 6 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 7 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST