Imran is now self-styled Kashmir ‘ambassador

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “historic blunder” of revoking the special status of Jammu and Kashmir has paved the way for the “freedom” of the Himalayan region and that the time has come for Pakistan’s Kashmir policy to take a “decisive” turn.


The Pakistan PM also warned the international community that both his country and India are nuclear weapons states and a nuclear war has no winners.

The onus, Khan said, was on the UN to help the “oppressed” people of Kashmir. “Historically, the world bodies have always sided with the powerful, but I want to tell the UN that 1.25 billion Muslims are looking towards it to see if it will act,” he said. “Will these big countries keep looking at their economic interests only? They should remember that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. In a nuclear war, no one will win. It will not only wreak havoc in this region, but the entire world will face consequences,” he said.

“Time will prove that the Indian government has given an opportunity to the Kashmiri people to get their freedom. They (India) have played their last card,” Khan said in a televised address to the nation on his government’s future strategy on the situation.

Khan said he would “act as Kashmir’s ambassador” and tell the international community that this Indian government “is not an ordinary government but one which follows a dangerous ideology”. He added that he had shared this with heads of state and that he would raise this issue at the UN and discuss it during meetings with world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, Khan said.

“We won on the diplomatic front; we internationalised the Kashmir issue, talked to heads of state, their embassies (and) the UN Security Council called a session on Kashmir for the first time since 1965. We also kept raising this for the international media to report and they picked this up,” he said, adding that the Western media has never criticised India as much as it is doing right now.

“I read in the newspapers that people are disappointed that Muslim countries are not siding with Kashmir. I want to tell you not to be disappointed; if some countries are not raising this issue because of their economic interests, they will eventually take this issue up. They will have to, with time,” the PM said. “I want to assure the Kashmiri people that whether the world stands with them or not, Pakistan will,” Khan said.

He announced that till the UNGA’s upcoming session, every week a 30-minute event would be held to express solidarity with the people of Kashmir. The first event, he said, would be on Friday from 12-12.30 pm.

Khan also said that all embassies had been informed about India’s “false flag operation”. “Our army is ready and it will be difficult for them (India) to have an operation in Azad Kashmir,” he added.