- Says military conflicts are not the solution to problems
DAVOS, January 22: The prime minister was speaking to media in Davos, where he is attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit. He spoke about India-Pakistan tensions, saying that Modi’s wrong policies in occupied Kashmir were the main cause for deteriorating relations between Islamabad and New Delhi.
The prime minister said he was a “firm believer” in peace and that military conflicts were never the solution to problems. PM Imran said he reached out to Modi to settle disputes between the two countries when he first became prime minister. However, he said the reaction from Modi was “quite weird”.
Saying that he came across a brick wall in his interaction with Modi, the prime minister stated that he asked for actionable intelligence for the Pulwama attack. He said the “dossier arrived after Indian jets bombed Pakistan”.
PM Imran said Modi’s policies were a disaster for India and an even bigger disaster for the people of Kashmir. He said that the people of occupied Kashmir were in an open prison by 900,000 troops.
“They’re {Indian state] are trying to change the demography of Kashmir which is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention. I have spoken to President Trump about this as well,” he said.
While saying that Pakistan and India were not “close to war” the prime minister said he feared India would become similar to Nazi Germany.
Speaking about the War on Terror, PM Imran said he was “opposed to this [War on Terror]| and for that, he was considered anti-American or pro-Taliban. Prime Minister Imran said Pakistan had a “decent relationship for the first time” with the US as both had common objectives now.
He said that Pakistani governments made the mistake of aligning with the US in the War on Terror when it should have abstained from it. PM Imran said more than 70,000 people had been killed in the war and it “created more terrorists because of collateral damage”.
He said previously Pakistan’s relationship with the US was awful as Washington expected Islamabad to help it win the war in Afghanistan. “Pakistan should never have accepted this challenge from the US. We could not do it, we couldn’t deliver,” he said.
The prime minister said Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US all wanted peace. He said it was just a question of how to get the Taliban to talk to the US and then to the Afghan government. PM Imran said among other issues he spoke to President Trump about, the two leaders also discussed trade.
“Pakistan wants a trade relationship with the US as well,” he said, saying that previously it was just a “transactional relationship” between the two countries where the US was just helping out Pakistan for siding with it in the War on Terror.
PM Imran said his government had the complete support of the Pakistan Army when it came to its foreign policy. -Agencies
