- HC says no proposal to make GB fifth province of Pakistan
Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit has said that Pakistan is not using China despite the fact and there is no doubt that Islamabad and Beijing have a strategic relationship and exemplary friendship.
“However, whatever position China takes at UN is a principled position and it would be wrong to say that Pakistan is using China,” he said in an exclusive chit-chat with Indian media. In Pakistan, “there is a national consensus on maintaining relations with India,” he said.
“If Kashmir issue is discussed along with terrorism then matters with India will move forward,” he said, and pointed out the incidents like Kulbhushan Yadav, an Indian Navy officer arrested in Balochistan over charges of spying for the Indian intelligence agency, and the Samjhota Express are problems for bilateral relations”, he underlined.
Indian extremists carried out terror attack on the Delhi-Lahore Samjhota Express in 2007 that left 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, dead. “Pakistan has always opposed terrorism and we have been condemning it,” the high commissioner said.
He said that Pakistan wants better relations with India. “We are working for better relations with India,” he said. Both Pakistan and India should sit on one table to resolve their problems, he said, adding that need was there that both the countries go for talks on all issues.
To a question, he said that there was no proposal to make Gilgit Baltistan the fifth province of Pakistan. “I am not aware of any proposal to make Gilgit Baltistan the fifth province of Pakistan, he categorically said.
Talking to Pakistan Today, Gilgit Baltistan Chief Minister Hafeezur Rehman had said that the proposed constitutional reforms package would address at least 80 per cent of deprivation of the people. However, he refused to share what the high-level committee, constituted last year by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to introduce constitutional reforms for Gilgit Baltistan, has proposed in its recommendations.
“As I am under oath, I cannot share (those) details (about the outcome of a number of meetings of the committee convened in Islamabad over the last nine months,” the chief minister had said, adding that the new package would empower the region both financially and politically.