ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistan will allow people in the Pakistani division of divided Kashmir to decide whether to join Pakistan or choose to remain independent in a future referendum on the disputed Himalayan region, the prime minister said on Friday.
Imran Khan was speaking during a demonstration in the Kashmir-led city of Kotli in Pakistan when the country marked Solidarity’s annual day of solidarity with Kashmir.
“If God wills, Pakistan will give Kashmir people the right to decide whether they want to remain independent or become part of Pakistan,” Khan said.
Khan expressed his willingness to speak to his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, as he reversed the steps taken by New Delhi in 2019 through the special status of Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India, and through both as a whole. demanded, to change.
At the time, relations between Pakistan and India were tense over New Delhi’s move to divide the Indian majority of the Kashmir Muslim majority into two federal government areas – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh – which ripped anger on both sides of the border. .
Khan attacked India’s Hindu nationalist government over the action and called India a state sponsor of hatred and prejudice against Islam. Since then, Pakistan has refused to talk to India, saying Modi must first restore the original status of the Kashmir ruled by India.
Pakistani Information Minister Shibli Faraz had earlier told The Associated Press that Islamabad would resume talks with India when Modi’s government convenes a referendum in Kashmir in accordance with UN resolutions.
In southwestern Pakistan, at least 16 people were injured when an unknown assailant threw a hand grenade at people standing by a roadside minutes after a pro-Kashmir protest raged through the area, police chief Wazir said. Ali Marri, said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in the Sibi district of Baluchistan province. The restored province was the scene of a low revolt by separatists claiming a greater share of local natural gas and mineral resources.
Also in Baluchistan, later Friday, a bomb went off near a government office in the provincial capital Quetta, killing at least two people and wounding five, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing near the deputy commissioner’s office.
In Kashmir, Pakistan has long insisted on the right to self-determination under a UN resolution adopted in 1948, asking for a referendum on whether Kashmiris would merge with Pakistan or India.
The future of the Muslim majority Kashmir was left unresolved at the end of the British colonial rule in 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim-Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have waged two of their three wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from the British government in 1947. In 2019, a car bomb attack in India-controlled Kashmir killed 40 Indian soldiers and brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
India has an estimated 700,000 troops in its part of Kashmir, which has been fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and liberating civilians. More than 68,000 people, mostly civilians, died in the conflict.
The Pakistani army also sent foreign media on a tour of a border town in Kashmir on Friday, to demonstrate damage caused by Indian fire. Residents in the area accuse India of deliberately targeting civilians, India has denied.
The two parties regularly trade in fire in violation of the 2003 ceasefire agreement on the line of control, which separates the two sectors from Kashmir. Civilians are often caught in the crossfire, with dozens killed in the violence each year.
Most people living along the border have lost family members or relatives in recent decades.
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Associated Press authors Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, and Muhammad Yousaf from Bhimber, Pakistan, contributed to this report.