Islamabad: In an embarrassment to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, his cabinet colleague, interior minister Ijaz Ahmed Shah, has blamed the “ruling elite” of the country for Islamabad’s failure to garner international support against India over the Kashmir issue. Shah added that the “ruling elite has destroyed the country.”
In an interview, the minister said: “People do not believe us in the international community. We say they (India) imposed curfew and are not giving medicines to people of Jammu & Kashmir. People do not believe us, but they believe them. The international community thinks that we are not a serious nation.”
Shah said the “ruling elite” included all leaders, starting from General Zia-ul-Haq. When asked whether Khan and his top advisors were also included in what he termed as the “ruling elite”, he said: “Everyone is responsible. Pakistan should now do a soul searching.”
Pakistan has been snubbed repeatedly on the Kashmir issue by the international diplomatic community, prompting Khan to warn that any war between India and Pakistan will have global consequences. Earlier this week, Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in Geneva that India had turned Kashmir into the largest “caged prison in this planet”. This drew a fierce response from New Delhi which accused Islamabad of using cross-border terrorism as a form of “alternate diplomacy” while saying that the recent decision on J&K was India’s internal affair.
N-conflict possible, says Imran
Meanwhile, Imran Khan has raised the spectre of a nuclear war with India again over Kashmir, saying this could be a “consequence” in the event of Islamabad losing a conventional war with New Delhi. In an interview, Khan reiterated that nuclear war between the two neighbours could be a possibility. “When two nuclear-armed countries fight, if they fight a conventional war, there is every possibility that it is going to end up into nuclear war. The unthinkable.”
While emphasizing that he was clear that Pakistan would never start a war, Khan said: “I am a pacifist, I am anti-war. If say Pakistan, God forbid, we are fighting a conventional war, (which) we are losing, and if a country is stuck between the choice: either you surrender or you fight till death for your freedom, I know Pakistanis will fight to death for their freedom. So when a nuclear armed country fights to the end, to the death, it has consequences.”
Raking up the Kashmir issue, Khan said: “Eight million Muslims in Kashmir are under siege for almost now six weeks. And why this (Kashmir) can become a flashpoint between India and Pakistan is because what we already know India is trying to do is divert attention from their illegal annexation and their impending genocide on Kashmir.”
