ISLAMABAD - Pakistan yesterday said that there were no backdoor talks between Pakistan and India.
Speaking at a weekly news briefing here, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Indian atrocities on Kashmiris continued in occupied Kashmir in February; two Kashmiris were martyred and seven were injured.
“Bullets were fired on those who raised their voice for their rights, more than 400 Kashmiri leaders, journalists, and intellectuals are imprisoned in Indian jails,” Baloch said.
The spokesperson also highlighted the ongoing human rights violations in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) during last month and mentioned that the Indian troops martyred five Kashmiris.
She said Pakistan will continue to raise its voice against the grave human rights violations in IIOJK.
To a question about latest report of EU DisinfoLab about India, she said the report once again corroborates “our long held position about some Indian media outlets involved in smear campaign against Pakistan.”
Seven Pakistani nationals have drowned in a boat wreck near Libya’s port city Benghazi, the Foreign Office said Thursday.
The FO spokesperson said the embassy of Pakistan in Libya was facilitating the process of identification of the bodies. Fifty-nine people died, including some children when a wooden sailing boat, carrying migrants crashed against rocks on the southern Italian coast early on Sunday.
The FO spokesperson said the bodies would be transported to Pakistan with the support of local authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross. She said the embassy and ministry of foreign affairs were also in contact with the families of the deceased.
She said on March 8, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will travel to New York to attend a conference on Islam and women.
As an initiative of FM Bilawal, she said, the conference is being convened by Pakistan in its capacity as the chair of the OIC Council of Ministers at the UN headquarters on the sidelines of the 67th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She said the foreign minister would chair the high-level and policy dialogue segments, with ministerial-level participation from OIC member states and non-OIC states. On March 10, the foreign minister will lead an event on Islamophobia in New York. It may be recalled that last year, at the initiative of Pakistan, the United Nations General Assembly declared March 15 as the Day to Combat Islamophobia. The FO spokesperson announced that Germany’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Tobias Lindner would pay his maiden visit to Pakistan from March 4-7.
