Pakistan seeks peace in Kashmir
Pakistan and India will experience durable peace only if the two nations resolve their 57-year-old dispute over the Himalayan state of Kashmir, Pakistan’s foreign minister has said.
And Kashmiris must be included in the peace process for the matter to be resolved, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said after meeting his US counterpart Condoleezza Rice for more than an hour at the State Department in Washington on Friday.
Kasuri said Rice asked how the dialogue between Pakistan and India was progressing. “I told her that we needed to resolve this issue so that there could be durable peace between Pakistan and India,” he said.
“Pakistan and India need to guard against other issues raising their ugly heads because 57 years of Kashmir is enough,” Kasuri said.
“In order that it is resolved, we need to include the Kashmiris in the peace process,” he said. “There can be no resolution to the dispute if the Kashmiris are not involved.”
“It’s like trying to solve the Palestinian problem without the Palestinians.”
The Himalayan region is divided between Pakistan and India and is claimed by both. It has caused two of the three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours since their independence from Britain in 1947.