GOA: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Friday that both Pakistanis and Indians want peace and that New Delhi needs to make a “conducive environment” for talks between the two countries.
He said this to reporters in the Indian state of Goa. He was attending a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) there.
Bilawal’s trip to India is the first time a Pakistani foreign minister has been to Delhi in more than ten years. The trip has a lot of attention from the media in both countries. The two countries have fought three wars, don’t get along well, and have cut diplomatic ties.
The foreign minister said that it was up to India to make a good environment for talks. India’s decision to end the special status of IIOJK in 2019 made it harder for the two countries to talk.
Bilawal, on the other hand, said that diplomatic relations had not changed. Even though he had made a rare trip to India. “India did things that were against the law in August 2019 and went against UN resolutions,” the FM said.
Kashmir Issue
The foreign minister said that Pakistan has a clear and firm position on the Kashmir issue. He also said that India’s “one-sided actions” have hurt the relationship between the two countries.
“India will have to change its mind about what it said on August 5,” he said. Bilawal also talked about how sports a source of tension between the two countries. He said that sports should kept out of politics and foreign policy.
The foreign minister said that he tried to send Pakistan’s cricket blind to India, but they were not given visas.
He asked, “Why is India afraid of Pakistan’s blind cricket team?” “I have tried to keep Pakistan’s politics inside the country.”
Bilawal also said that Pakistan will be able to run a successful meeting when it is in charge of the SCO.
“Giving terrorists weapons”
Earlier today, the FM spoke at the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) summit and warned the member states against “weaponizing terrorism for diplomatic point scoring,” without naming India.
Before Bilawal spoke, the Indian Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said that terrorism is still a threat and that ignoring it is bad for everyone’s security.
“We are all responsible for the safety of our people as a whole. Terrorism is still a threat to the safety of the whole world. “Let’s not turn terrorism into a weapon to score diplomatic points,” Bilawal said.
The foreign minister stressed that getting rid of this threat requires not only a “comprehensive approach” but also a “collective approach.”
He said that both the root causes and the threats from certain groups need to be dealt with.
“It requires that we let this challenge bring us together so we can fight it, instead of letting it split us up and make us its victims. “For us to be successful, we have to keep geopolitical partisanship out of this issue,” he said, adding that there are practical, pragmatic ways to end this chapter for good.
“We need to stop putting non-state actors in the same category as state actors. “Condemn all kinds of terrorism, even terrorism that is supported by the government,” he said.
“Meeting with China and Afghanistan’s foreign ministers”
Bilawal also said on Twitter that when he gets back to Pakistan tonight, he will hold a press conference.
“Tomorrow, the foreign ministers of China and Afghanistan will come to Pakistan, where we will have bilateral meetings and then a meeting with all three countries,” said the finance minister.
