‘India, Pak were pretty close to resolving Kashmir’

India and Pakistan were “pretty close” to resolving the Kashmir issue, in phases, during the regime of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday.

“They came pretty close on resolving the Kashmir issue– phased movement… referendum during the time of Vajpayee,” Khan said inresponse to a question during his appearance at the US Institute of Peace, aUS-Congress funded think-tank. He, however, refrained from elaborating on thesolution, saying it’s a sensitive issue. But he insisted that Kashmir is the”bone of contention” between India and Pakistan.

   

“India is a country which we’ve had turbulentrelationship with. Unfortunately, because of one issue of Kashmir, whenever, wehave tried, whenever relationship has started to move in the right directionwith India, some incident happens and that’s all related to Kashmir, and we goback to square one,” he said.

Deflecting a question on Jamaat-ud Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed,who was recently arrested for the seventh time, Khan said it is in the interestof Pakistan that “we do not allow any armed militant groups tooperate” in our country.

The Pulwama attack, he claimed, was “an indigenousthing.”

Pakistan, he said, came in picture, because a group (Jaish-e-Muhammad) based in his country and also in Kashmir claimed responsibility for the attack. “The country has had enough of militant groups. Pakistan is now determined. We would not be disarming them if the security forces were not behind this decision,” he said. PTI

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