Mubashar Naqvi
Muzaffarabad
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan on Sunday made it clear that the internationally acknowledged issue of Kashmir could not be brushed aside to please any certain group, community or nation. Taking strong exception to a recent pro-India statement of Sir Kier Starmer, the new leader of UK’s Labour Party, he said recent statement of Labour party leader Keir Starm on Kashmir after meeting an Indian lobby is a reflection of odious hypocrisy because it leaves out historical facts, UN Security Coucnil Resolutions, international laws and ethicality.
After a meeting with Labour Friends of India on April 30, Sir Starmer had said: “We must not allow issues of the subcontinent to divide communities here [UK]. Any constitutional issues in India are a matter for the Indian Parliament and Kashmir is a bilateral issue for India and Pakistan to resolve peacefully. Labour is an internationalist Party and stands for the defence of human rights everywhere.”
He had also said that a Labour government under his leadership would be determined to build even stronger business links with India and to co-operate on the global stage on issues such as climate change. “I look forward to meeting the Indian High Commissioner in due course to open a renewed dialogue between the Labour Party and the people of India,” Mr Starmer had said.
In his response to it, the AJK premier made it clear that neither did the Kashmiris have any personal enmity with the people of India nor did they ever want any other country or nation to develop and practice the same. However, since 1947 the Kashmiris had been at war with the tyrannical regimes in New Delhi for ruthlessly trying to suppress their legitimate demand for right to self-determination by employing brute force and other nefarious methods, he said.
