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.<\/p>\n
Bilawal was addressing a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on recent regional developments after the military conflict.<\/p>\n
The address came amid the visit of a high-level team \u2014 consisting of three former foreign ministers, two former foreign sec\u00ad\u00adretaries, two former ambassadors to the US, and a serving federal minister \u2014 for consultations at the United Nations. The team arrived in New York on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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 Teh\u00admina Janjua are members of the delegation.<\/p>\n
Bilawal said Pakistan\u2019s position was to hold a \u201ccomprehensive dialogue\u201d with India that would include the issue of terrorism as well. Bilawal said Pakistan was the country where the \u201csingle largest number of terrorist attacks\u201d occurred and was also the country with the single largest number of victims of terrorism.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cJust 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Bilawal said he wanted to use the opportunity to share Pakistan\u2019s perspective on the recent military conflict with India in the wake of the Pahalgam attack, as well as the way forward.<\/p>\n
Reiterating the \u201cillegal strikes\u201d launched by India as part of its \u2018Operation Sindoor\u2019 \u201cin violation of the UN Charter, international law\u201d, Bilawal said the attacks had targeted civilian infrastructure, places of worship, energy infrastructure and innocent women and children.<\/p>\n
He said India had used the April 22 terrorist attack in occupied Kashmir\u2019s Pahalgam as a premise for the strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expressed our sympathy with the victims of terrorism and Pakistan has consistently and unequivocally condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,\u201d he said, adding that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had immediately expressed Pakistan\u2019s willingness to India and the global community to be part of any impartial international investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u2019s offer and chose instead to conduct their illegal strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cPakistan only ever acted in self-defence, we never initiated any violence against India,\u201d Bilawal said, adding that the Pakistani military had responded with precision the night of the first Indian attack and \u201conly targeted and downed six planes because we believed those were the ones to release their load on Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said India subsequently launched missile strikes into Pakistan in the next two days and the latter \u201cresponded in kind\u201d. \u201cDue to the intervention of the international community, and I\u2019d 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,\u201d Bilawal added.<\/p>\n
He said the above was a \u201cwelcome first step\u201d but was \u201conly a first step\u201d. \u201cI 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,\u201d the former FM added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe military and political leadership of Pakistan and the country are not the caricature that India would like to paint of us,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
He also pointed out that the Financial Action Task Force \u2014 the international watchdog against money laundering and financing of terrorism \u2014 had endorsed Pakistan\u2019s taking measures to combat terror financing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9772,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9770\/revisions\/9772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}