Pak. envoy hails 'reciprocal steps'

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, DEC. 23. The Pakistani ambassador to Russia, Mr. Iftikhar Murshed, hailed as very important the ``reciprocal steps'' taken by India and Pakistan this week to reduce tensions over Kashmir and called for a dialogue between the two countries.

Addressing a rare press conference at his residence in Moscow, Mr. Murshed said he was reluctant to use the word breakthrough that Western media used to describe Pakistan's announcement of a partial troop withdrawal from the LoC in Kashmir in response to India's extension of a unilateral ceasefire, but expressed a guarded optimism.

This is certainly a very major, very important development, because Pakistan and India were nuclear powers and Kashmir was a flashpoint of tensions, the ambassador told reporters here.

Mr. Murshed called for tripartite talks with India and the people of Kashmir because the Kashmir issue could only be resolved through negotiations and dialogue among the three parties involved. ``We are ever ready for a dialogue with India any place, any time, any level, provided it addressed the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani ambassador said.

Mr. Murshed, who before his appointment to Moscow earlier this year served as Deputy Foreign Minister in charge of Afghanistan, hit out sharply at the latest U.N. Security Council resolution, which called for a ban on arms supplies to the Taliban. He said the one-sided arms embargo against the Taliban amounted to interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs and was tantamount to promoting war in that country.

Russia, which co-sponsored the Security Council resolution, defended it as a legitimate reaction of the world community to the Taliban's policies, which had turned Afghanistan into a major stronghold of international terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking operations.

``We hope these measures will force the Taliban to change its ways and policy,'' the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr. Sergei Ordzhonikidze, told reporters in Moscow.

But the Pakistani ambassador said the U.N. sanctions would only aggravate famine in Afghanistan and lead to a new exodus of refugees to Pakistan. A senior official at the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the argument as sheer propaganda designed to impress uninformed people. He pointed out that the Security Council resolution did not call for closing Afghanistan's borders or for stopping international relief supplies. The Russian diplomat also disputed Mr. Murshed's assertion that inertia had been broken in Pakistani-Russian relations.

``We are ready to develop relations with Pakistan on condition it stops giving all-round support to the Taliban and prevails over it to agree to a real coalition government in Afghanistan, the Russian Foreign Ministry official said.

Interestingly, the Pakistani ambassador hinted at a possibility of compromise over the U.S. demand that the Taliban surrender the international terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

Insisting that it was not in the Afghan tradition to hand over people who sought asylum on Afghan soil, he recalled the case of 11 Nazi generals who took refuge in Afghanistan after World War II, but were eventually surrendered by the Zahir Shah Government after obtaining guarantees that they would not be sentenced to death.

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Section  : International
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