ISLAMABAD - Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Monday categorically said Jammu and Kashmir was not India's internal matter and the final settlement of the dispute lay in the resolutions of United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
"Let me be clear: Jammu & Kashmir is an internationally recognised dispute on the UN Security Council agenda," he said in a tweet. The foreign minister mentioned that the UNSC resolution called for "free and impartial plebiscite under" the UN auspices to resolve the dispute. "Nothing about J&K can be India’s internal matter," he said.
Also, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that Pakistan will not give any airbase to the United States as it starts pullout from the Afghanistan after its long war. In a television interview, the FM said Pakistan has good ties with the US but the speculations about granting airbases to Washington were groundless. “The US appreciates Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan. We want (even) better relations with the US. There have been speculations about the airbases but we have no such intention (to grant airbases to the US),” he remarked.
Asked about US President Joe Biden’s pre-election statements that after withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, they will need bases abroad, FM Qureshi said: “These are speculations.”
The speculations come as President Biden had announced troops’ withdrawal under an agreement with the Afghan Taliban a year ago. The drawdown, has raised fears of intensification in the war between Afghan government forces and the Taliban insurgency in the conflict-torn nation, which shares about 2,600-kilometers of border with Pakistan, because the two adversaries are yet to reach a peace deal after months of talks.
Despite its long-running skepticism, Washington credits Islamabad with facilitating talks between US and Taliban interlocutors that culminated in the signing of the February 2020 peace agreement between the two adversaries.
Pakistan has long retaken control of its bases from the US, but the country’s airspace and land routes are still being used to ferry non-lethal military supplies for international forces across the Afghan border.
Pakistan still hosts around three million Afghan refugees who have fled four decades of civil war, persecution and poverty.
The US has 2,500 troops and hundreds of special forces in Afghanistan. The Biden administration aims to withdraw them all, plus thousands of supporting civilian contractors, by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda that prompted the US to invade Afghanistan.
Successive American presidents have boosted and drawn down troops but none has ended its role in the war in Afghanistan, much less achieved peace in the country.