Gauhar Zahid Malik Islamabad
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Thursday that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, being a collective voice of Muslim Ummah, can prove to be an effective platform to cope with Afghanistan’s situation.
The FM’s resolve came whilst he was chairing a meeting in Islamabad wherein he said that the upcoming OIC moot will be aimed at drawing the world’s attention towards the need to extend assistance to the Afghan people faced with a dire humanitarian situation.
“The world now understands that abandoning Afghanistan is not in anybody’s interest,” he said, adding that the world appears willing to extend assistance to the war-torn country on humanitarian grounds.
Qureshi further stated that Pakistan has also invited Afghans to the upcoming meeting so that they could present their point of view.
He said Pakistan wanted the Taliban to listen to the concerns of the international community relating to human rights in particular.
He said Pakistan was not the “spokesperson” of the Taliban, but only wanted to bring the stakeholders to the OIC platform to directly get across their points of view.
He said the focus of Pakistan was an improvement in the lives of Afghan people who faced conflict for decades.
“We are not limiting ourselves to any particular faction or group in Afghanistan,” he said.
He dismissed the impression that holding of the OIC conference on Afghanistan was a step towards recognizing the government.
Information Minister Ch Fawad Hussain said 22 foreign ministers from OIC states, eight senior officials, and other representatives of the member countries had so far confirmed their participation in the conference.
Qureshi said the moot offered a “rare opportu-nity for peace and stability in Afghanistan. “The whole region will benefit if things go right. But in case of situation moving the wrong way, all gains will come to a naught,” he warned.
The foreign minister thanked the initiative of Saudi Arabia being the chair of OIC to call the Extraordi-nary Session on Afghanistan, to be attended by several important countries such as Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Arab and African countries.
He recalled that at the one hand the UN Secre-tary-General had called for resource mobilization for Afghanistan, while on the other hand the country still faced economic sanctions. He said the advent of winter could aggravate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
“If the world continued to show apathy towards Afghans, who have already been facing conflict for decades, they will fall victim to the grave situation. People including young children will starve to death,” he sa id.
