ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistan will allow people in the divided section of Kashmir administered by Pakistan to decide whether they want to join Pakistan or prefer to remain independent in a future referendum in the disputed Himalayan region, the prime minister said on Friday. .
Imran Khan spoke at a rally in the city of Kotli, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as the country celebrated the annual Day of Solidarity with Kashmir.
“God willing, Pakistan will give the people of Kashmir the right to decide whether they want to remain independent or become part of Pakistan,” said Khan.
Khan expressed willingness to speak with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, if he reversed the measures taken by New Delhi in 2019, changing the special status of Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in their entirety.
At the time, relations between Pakistan and India were strained by New Delhi’s decision to divide India’s Muslim-administered part of Kashmir into two territories governed by the federal government – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh – generating anger in both countries. sides of the border.
Khan attacked India’s Hindu nationalist government for action, calling India a state sponsor of hatred and prejudice against Islam. Since then, Pakistan has refused to enter into negotiations with India, saying Modi must first restore the original status of India-administered Kashmir.
Previously, Pakistan’s Information Minister Shibli Faraz told the Associated Press that Islamabad would resume negotiations with India when Modi’s government agreed to a Kashmir referendum in accordance with UN resolutions.
In southwest Pakistan, at least 16 people were injured when an unknown assailant threw a hand grenade at people on a road minutes after a pro-Kashmir rally passed through the area, said local police chief Wazir Ali Marri. No one took responsibility for the attack, which took place in the Sibi district of Balochistan. The bustling province has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatists who demand a larger share of local natural gas and mineral resources.
Also in Baluchistan, on Friday, a bomb exploded near a government office in the province’s capital Quetta, killing at least two people and wounding five, police said. No one immediately took responsibility for the attack, which took place near the deputy commissioner’s office.
In Kashmir, Pakistan has long been pushing for the right to self-determination under a UN resolution passed in 1948, which called for a referendum on whether Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan or India.
The future of Muslim-majority Kashmir was left unresolved at the end of British colonial rule in 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three Kashmir wars since gaining independence from British rule in 1947. In 2019, a car bomb in India-controlled Kashmir killed 40 Indian soldiers and drove nuclear-powered rivals to the brink of war.
India has about 700,000 soldiers in its part of Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region feels like a busy country, with soldiers in full combat equipment patrolling the streets and searching civilians. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the conflict.
Also on Friday, the Pakistani military took foreign media on a tour of a border village in Kashmir administered by Pakistan to demonstrate the damage caused by the Indian fire. Area residents accuse India of deliberately targeting civilians, a charge that India denies.
The two sides exchange fire regularly, violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement on the Control Line, which separates the two sectors of Kashmir. Civilians are often caught in the crossfire, with dozens killed each year in violence.
Most people who live along the dividing line have lost family members or relatives in recent decades.
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Associated Press writers Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan and Muhammad Yousaf of Bhimber, Pakistan contributed to this report.