AJK premier urges ‘proactive policy’

SIALKOT: The prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) has urged the Pakistan government to adopt a “proactive policy” on the festering Kashmir issue to pave the way for the annexation of the AJK with Pakistan.

Raja Muhammad Farooq Haider Khan was speaking at a meeting of Kashmiri refugees at a hotel in Sialkot. Attendees included Sialkot DCO Mujahid Sher Dil, President of the Sialkot District Bar Association Rana Nasarullah, President of the Sialkot chapter of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference Hafiz Muhammad Raza and several ministers from the AJK.

Khan hoped that Pakistan would continue extending political, moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiri people. He said Islamabad should also raise the issue of Indian state terrorism at the scheduled talks with Indian external affairs minister S M Krishna. He claimed that people in disputed Kashmir wanted annexation of the state with Pakistan.

The AJK prime minister called upon the international community to take notice of human rights violations, custodial killings and genocide of Kashmiri people by Indian forces in Kashmir. He hoped that sacrifices rendered by hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri people would lead to the “liberation of Kashmir state from Indian occupation.”

He also called on the world community to put pressure on India to resolve the decades-old Kashmir issue according to the aspirations of its people because it has become a nuclear flashpoint in South Asia.

Earlier, the AJK prime minister visited the house of Member AJK Legislative Assembly Muhammad Sadique Bhatti in Shakargarh-Narowal to offer condolence on the sad demise of his father.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2010.