‘Pakistan should not accept Indian aid even through UN’

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan should not accept the Indian aid of $5 million for flood victims, or even have any kind of ties with its neighbour unless India allows the Kashmiri people to determine their own future, an editorial in a Pakistani paper said Tuesday.

“Until India is willing to give Kashmiris the freedom of deciding their own future, we will not like any sort of ties with India and the $5 million dollar it gave as aid to Pakistan for the flood victims is not acceptable to us and it should be returned forthwith. It (the aid) is not acceptable even if channelled through the UN,” the editorial in the Urdu daily Nawa-i-Waqt said.

The editorial claimed that the Indian government had also realised that all their efforts had failed to quench the ardour of the Kashmiris for freedom and the Indian Army chief and even Home Minister P. Chidambaram had admitted that there was no solution to the issue except a political one.

“(Pakistan Foreign Minister) Shah Mahmood Qureshi should help the Indians and tell them that according to the wishes of the Kashmiri people, a plebiscite be carried out and the Kashmiris be free to decide about the course of their future. Only then will lasting peace be ushered in South Asia,” it said.

“Then there will be friendship with India, and trade with India,” the editorial said.

Citing Qureshi’s interview to a Kashmiri daily in which he had attacked Indian intransigence as the biggest hurdle in the resolution of the Kashmir issue and urged the US and other world powers to break their silence and put pressure on India to stop the killings of innocent Kashmiris, the editorial also “complimented” him.

“Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has made a statement worthy of a Pakistan foreign minister for the first time after becoming the foreign minister,” it said.