Envoy urges Pakistan-India nuclear confidence talks

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Masood Khan has termed Kashmir a “flashpoint” amid tensions between nuclear-tipped India and Pakistan, saying that the two countries should not only discuss their decades-old dispute but also negotiate nuclear confidence-building measures.

In an interview with Newsweek – a weekly American weekly magazine – the ambassador emphasised that India might think that it had taken care of the Kashmir issue but the Kashmiris did not think in that way and nor did the Pakistani people.

“I think that, realistically speaking, we should have talks not only on the future of Jammu and Kashmir and the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir… but we should also have nuclear confidence-building talks, so that we establish reliable communication channels,” he said.

Newsweek correspondent Tom O’Connor, who interviewed the ambassador amid Israeli war on Gaza, wrote that the presence of weapons of mass destruction on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) in the region, added another dimension to the conflict.

He cited Ambassador Masood Khan as arguing that it needed to be addressed by Islamabad and New Delhi to avoid a major crisis, intended or otherwise. “As two responsible nuclear weapons states, we must resolve outstanding disputes in Kashmir,” he said.

“India and Pakistan should have some sense of where we are, what our capabilities are, what our intentions are, as a matter of fact, and so that our entire approach to the region is not accident-prone,” the ambassador added.

The Newsweek pointed out that the Pakistani officials had often lamented a lack of international attention to the Kashmir issue, where New Delhi carried out a mass crackdown since Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status in August 2019.

“We would say that attention from Kashmir is moving away because of Ukraine or the preoccupation of the Western world with China as a competitor, as a challenger to the existing order, and so on,” Masood said. “Now, in addition to Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific politics, you have the Middle East,” he added.

”So, Kashmir is no more on the radar screen of the international community, and yet the oppression continues there,” he continued. “This is very perilous for the international community because the Kashmiris’ freedoms are as sacrosanct as the freedoms of any peoples in any part of the world.”

Pakistani officials have often drawn connections between the Kashmir dispute and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, owing to some common historical roots. Newsweek report said that Ambassador Masood Khan also referenced these commonalities, but also the dissimilarity.

For the rest of the world, the ambassador noted, the war on terror had come to an end, but it was not for Pakistan. Now, he hoped to continue to build more substantive ties between the two nations, based not only on security but also in various other fields such as investment, education and climate change.

“At least, this is our endeavour, that India’s close ties with the United States should not negatively impact our relations with the United States, And similarly, we’ve been assuring Americans here that our relations with China are not at the expense of the United States,” the ambassador said.