PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Tuesday urged the United Nations and the International community to push India towards a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan, where the two countries could address their outstanding issues and achieve peace in the wake of their recent military conflict in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack.
Bilawal was addressing a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on recent regional developments after the military conflict.
The address came amid the visit of a high-level team — consisting of three former foreign ministers, two former foreign secretaries, two former ambassadors to the US, and a serving federal minister — for consultations at the United Nations. The team arrived in New York on Sunday.
Ex-FMs Bilawal, Hina Rabbani Khar and Khurram Dastgir; Senators Sherry Rehman, Musadik Malik, Faisal Sabzwari and Bushra Anjum Butt; and Jalil Abbas Jilani and Tehmina Janjua are members of the delegation.
Bilawal said Pakistan’s position was to hold a “comprehensive dialogue” with India that would include the issue of terrorism as well. Bilawal said Pakistan was the country where the “single largest number of terrorist attacks” occurred and was also the country with the single largest number of victims of terrorism.
Bilawal said the Pakistani delegation was concluding its visit to New York and the UN and had appealed to the international community to assist the country in its pursuit of peace. “Just as the international community played its role in encouraging India to agree to a ceasefire, it should also encourage to engage in a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan so that we can address our issues and achieve peace,” he added.
Bilawal said he wanted to use the opportunity to share Pakistan’s perspective on the recent military conflict with India in the wake of the Pahalgam attack, as well as the way forward.
Reiterating the “illegal strikes” launched by India as part of its ‘Operation Sindoor’ “in violation of the UN Charter, international law”, Bilawal said the attacks had targeted civilian infrastructure, places of worship, energy infrastructure and innocent women and children.
He said India had used the April 22 terrorist attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam as a premise for the strikes.
“We expressed our sympathy with the victims of terrorism and Pakistan has consistently and unequivocally condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he said, adding that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had immediately expressed Pakistan’s willingness to India and the global community to be part of any impartial international investigation.
“We did so because we were confident our hands were clean and we had nothing to do with this terrorist attack. The Indian government refused Pakistan’s offer and chose instead to conduct their illegal strikes.
“Pakistan only ever acted in self-defence, we never initiated any violence against India,” Bilawal said, adding that the Pakistani military had responded with precision the night of the first Indian attack and “only targeted and downed six planes because we believed those were the ones to release their load on Pakistan”.
He said India subsequently launched missile strikes into Pakistan in the next two days and the latter “responded in kind”. “Due to the intervention of the international community, and I’d like here to particularly mention the role of US President Donald Trump and his team led by Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio, we did manage to achieve a ceasefire,” Bilawal added.
He said the above was a “welcome first step” but was “only a first step”. “I must emphasise that the global community today is less safe post this ceasefire and conflict than we were before simply because the threshold for full-blown military conflict between two nuclear-armed states has come down, it has not gone up,” the former FM added.
“We’ve seen during the course of this conflict how quickly the escalation ladder between our two countries rose and the concern is that the next time there is such an incident, there may not be time for the international community to intervene before things get alot worse. That is why it is absolutely important for Pakistan and the international community to continue to pursue dialogue and diplomacy as the only viable path to peace.”
“The military and political leadership of Pakistan and the country are not the caricature that India would like to paint of us,” he said, adding that politicians had fought terrorists on the frontline and paid a heavy cost while the military had confronted them on the battlefield and earned their honours and promotions.
He also pointed out that the Financial Action Task Force — the international watchdog against money laundering and financing of terrorism — had endorsed Pakistan’s taking measures to combat terror financing.
