Pakistan’s Foreign Minister defends cross border attacks

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday defended the cross-border shelling by Pakistani forces, saying what you would expect if 200 people cross the Pak-Afghan border and behead 17 soldiers and slaughter them.

Speaking to the media, the minister said that she had raised the issue of cross-border infiltration and shelling with her Afghan counterpart Zalmay Rassoul.

She observed, “I raised the concern with him that if you give a statement on Pakistan at another forum – ideally we should not be doing that. Pakistan does not like doing any kind of shelling.”

In her view, this was as distasteful for us as this for the other country. However, this was reaction to something that happens. In order to resolve the issue and work on border control, they should get the root cause of this problem.

The foreign minister added, “We will take responsibility from our side, they [Afghanistan] should take responsibility from their side. Pakistan should not be laden with everyone’s responsibility.”

While replying to a query pertaining to trilateral meeting between Pakistan, Afghanistan and United Kingdom, she informed the media that both Islamabad and Kabul had strong, historical relationships with London.

In her view, the meeting was a very helpful for Pakistan and Afghanistan as the United Kingdom had a historical understanding of the region.

Khar observed, “Pakistan might sign a long term agreement with Afghanistan so that its bilateral ties with the country are institutionalized and it was required and key. The military, intelligence and political leadership had strong ties with Afghanistan.”

Commenting on Kashmir issue, the minister said that the issue of mass graves was the biggest validation of Kashmiris’ stance on human rights violations.

She noted, “The international community cannot turn away from this issue.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=33278

Posted by Faisal Farooq on Sep 27 2012. Filed under Latest News, National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.