Azim demands Kashmir plebiscite like Scotland

• Pakistani envoy asks world to play due role on Kashmir

Pakistan High Commissioner to Canada Tariq Azim Khan while addressing academics and students at the McGill University here has said that if plebiscite can be held in Quebec or Scotland to decide their future, why not in Kashmir.

He gave a detailed background of the Jammu Kashmir issue, saying India continues to violate UN Security Council resolutions adopted in 1948 which says that India will maintain bare minimum force to maintain law and order in the disputed territories, whereas Jammu Kashmir has become a place where there is highest concentration of military troops anywhere in the world.

Under the UN Security Council resolutions, the Kashmiri people have right to decide their destiny, he said. However, their right was being denied by India, he said, and asked the international community to play its due role to grant them inalienable right to decide for their future in accordance with UN resolutions.

He said that even the Indian media has recognised that the indigenous movement for self-determination going on in Jammu Kashmir was now in the hands of local Kashmiri youth and it would not be possible for occupational forces to deny them their rights. He said that the international community should take notice of the situation as any conflict between two nuclear armed nations could be catastrophe for the regional peace.

In reply to a question, the high commissioner said that peaceful, strong and stable Afghanistan was in the interest of Pakistan and that Pakistan was a victim of terrorism itself by losing 80,000 of its civilian and over 7000 of its armed personnel in fighting terrorism. Pakistan has suffered over $100 billions in economic losses due to terrorism, he said.

He said that other countries in the region must refrain from fomenting their evil designs by supporting terrorism in order to dislodge recent economic developments in Pakistan. The recent acts of terrorism have the fingerprints of support of foreign agencies, he said. Earlier, Consul General Muhammad Aamer gave a detailed presentation to the university students on CPEC: Opportunities and Challenges for Pakistan.

He said that CPEC was not the name of a single route or alignment, rather it was a comprehensive package of cooperative initiatives and projects encompassing regional connectivity; information network infrastructure; energy co-operation, industries and industrial parks; agricultural development and poverty alleviation, tourism and financial cooperation.

He said that CPEC was a game changer project which would transform the fate of Pakistan and would help Pakistan modernise with the infusion of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment and it would result in thousands of new ventures and millions of jobs in every part of Pakistan.