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No peace in south Asia unless Kashmir is resolved: Sharief

Sonny Abraham in Dubai

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief says there can be no peace in south Asia unless the core issue of Kashmir was resolved between his country and India.

"The Kashmir issue remains central to the normalisation of the relations between the two countries," he told Al Khaleej, a Sharjah-based Arabic newspaper.

Sharief said India's decision to nuclearise South Asia had qualitatively altered the geo-strategic environment in the region.

"Pakistan believes in peace and has all along tried to normalise relations with India for which many initiatives were taken by successive governments in Pakistan," he said.

"More recently, I met Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Colombo at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit with the same objective in mind. But the outcome of my talks was zero," he said.

Sharief said India's decision to go nuclear had added a new urgency to resolve the Kashmir issue.

On the Islamisation initiative taken by him, Sharief said piecemeal steps in the past had led to a duality in Pakistan's legal system and created difficulties in the enforcement of Shariat.

"The proposed amendment tries to achieve nothing less and nothing more than the removal of that duality by declaring the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet as the supreme law of Pakistan," he explained.

On Afghanistan, he said Pakistan had always supported a negotiated settlement of the conflict.

"Pakistan has been maintaining regular contact with all the Afghan parties that can contribute to peace in Afghanistan," he said.

UNI

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