New POK PM will only increase anti-India rhetoric, pushing back Kashmir issue

Muzaffarabad, Jan 8 (ANI): The way the new Pakistan Occupied Kashmir Prime Minister Muhammad Yaqub was forced by the PPP-led Government to dislodge his predecessor Sardar Attique Ahmed, has made it clear that he will ratchet up the anti-India rhetoric now in vogue in Pakistan, without regard to how far it pushes back the cause of Kashmir.

The ruling Muslim Conference in POK was split on the directives of Islamabad to replace Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed with Muhammad Yaqub following a no-confidence vote based on allegations of "corruption and nepotism".

It is becoming more and more imminent that Yaqub will only cleanse the administration of corruption and leave the posturing over Kashmir.

Charges of "interference" will never be irrelevant in POK because of Article 21 of its Constitution, which vests all authority in the Prime Minister of Pakistan, rather than the Prime Minister of POK, the Daily Times said in its lead editorial.

This means the POK PM serves at the pleasure of the Kashmir Affairs Ministry in Islamabad and often has to encash his infinite flexibility with marginal "collection" of rewards for himself and his cronies.

Sardar Attique's Muslim Conference has been in power since July 2001 when the government of the POK People's Party was toppled after it was accused of moral impropriety and promoting graft.

The Muslim Conference was loyal to the PML-N and it had supported the Kashmir policy of General Zia too. After 2001, the realism of Muslim Conference made it ride with General Musharraf's new proposals for Kashmir, like the Theory of Four Regions and the declaration of Line of Control (LoC) as Line of Commerce (LoC).

The man behind this change was the intellectually supple Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan, Sardar Attique's father, who could communicate at the global level.

The PPP government if it has at all participated in the toppling may want to get rid of the vestiges of former President Pervez Musharraf and his policy. (ANI)