Srinagar: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday said that Kashmir is an integral part of Pakistan’s identity.
Sharif made the remarks while addressing the inaugural ceremony of two-day international parliamentary seminar on Kashmir in Islamabad, Radio Pakistan reported.
“Our hearts beat and sink with our Kashmiri brethren. We share each moment of their pain and pleasures. We rejoice in their happiness and grieve in their gloom,” Sharif said.
He saluted the spirit and determination of the Kashmiri people for “continuing inalienable right to self determination in the face of brutal repression.”
“The youth of Kashmiri people are writing a new chapter in Kashmir history,” he said, according to the report.
The report said that speaking on the occasion Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that Jammu and Kashmir dispute is a stigma on the international process.
“Both Kashmir and Palestine are the two longest unresolved items on the UNSC agenda. The denial of right of self determination to the Kashmiri people promised by the international community as well as by the founding leaders of India has compounded the sufferings of the Kashmiri people,” Aziz was quoted as saying.
Addressing the seminar, Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly Sardar Ayyaz Sadiq said the lingering Kashmir dispute must be solved at the earliest to avert further instability in the whole region, it said.
“The unabated genocide of Kashmiris at the hands of Indian Occupied Forces over the last seven decades has led to decline in population from seventy nine to sixty eight percent currently,” it quoted Ayyaz Sadiq as saying.