NEW YORK: Yusuf Buch, a former Pakistani cabinet minister and diplomat, has underscored the need for the resolution of the decades-old Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, saying third party mediation would facilitate the parties in accomplishing the objective.
“The breaking of the impasse over Kashmir between India and Pakistan would be greatly facilitated by the presence of a mediator who would define the obligations of the parties under the agreements concluded between them, spell out the contentious issues and the conflicting positions, and remove the confusion about what needs to be done to narrow the gap,” he said in a meeting with Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri activist and secretary-general of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, according to a press release.
“The Governments of Pakistan and India have ample opportunities to articulate their positions and make them known to the world, not so the people of Kashmir,” Buch, who is best known as an authority on the Kashmir dispute, was quoted as saying, while emphasising that the conflict should also be seen from a Kashmiri and human perspective.
Buch, 95, was special assistant to former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during 1972-77, with the rank of a federal minister. He also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Switzerland in 1977.
Later, Buch joined the United Nations as senior adviser to the Secretary-General, a post he held for 14 years. He called for dispelling the impression that the Kashmir issue had somehow lost its urgency or its significance, saying it ignores the agony of the people of Kashmir.
“We owe it to the tens of thousands whose blood has consecrated the cause of Kashmir’s azadi (independence) to try and disentangle it in whatever degree we can.”
He also underlined the importance of United Nations’ Charter for the settlement of Kashmir and other international problems. “The Charter is not a scripture or a book of morals, but a multilateral treaty as binding on the largest or most powerful member states of the world organisation as on the smallest or weakest,” Buch said. “The sanctity of international agreements must remain one of the bases of a sane and stable international order. The Kashmir issue involves that principle most pointedly.” Responding to a question, he said to call Kashmir a territorial dispute was simply to dehumanise it.
