Aziz for courage, flexibility to resolve Kashmir issue

Islamabad, Apr 11: Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said today that Pakistan, India and Kashmiris would have to show courage, determination and flexibility to evolve a durable solution to the Kashmir issue. He made the statement while addressing a land forces symplosium at the National Defence university here today. "In our relations with India, we are pursuing a composite dialogue process aimed at resolving all outstanding issues, especially the core dispute of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.

This dialogue process, he maintained, had helped ease tensions and facilitated confidence-building measures including greater people-to-people contacts.

"The time has now come to move from conflict management to conflict resolution," Aziz said while recalling President Pervez Musharraf "fresh ideas" for out of the box thinking.

"We are convinced that a durable Kashmir settlement must be based on the wishes and aspirations of the people of Kashmir", he stressed On nuclear non-proliferation, he said as a responsible nuclear power, Pakistan is committed to non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.

"We were compelled to develop our nuclear weapons capability in response to Indian acquisition of nuclear weapons as a means of guaranteeing our security," he added.

Pakistan's nuclear deterrent, he said, had ensured peace in the sub-continent. "Our nuclear doctrine is based on minimum credible deterrence and we reject an arms race in strategic or conventional weapons in our neighbourhood".

Mr Aziz stated that Islamabad had also proposed a Strategic Restraint Regime to India to prevent the horizontal and vertical proliferation of strategic and conventional weapon systems.

UNI

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