ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, during a meeting of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Thur­s­day, struggled to explain Prime Minister Imran Khan’s comments to the international media that the BJP’s return to government after the current elections in India would improve the prospects of dialogue with Pakistan.

Mr Qureshi claimed that the media had quoted PM Khan out of context and insisted that the prime minister’s views about his Indian counterpart Naren­dra Modi are well known.

Talking to a group of foreign journalists, Mr Khan had said: “Perhaps if the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] — a right-wing party — wins, some kind of settlement in Kashmir could be reached.” He worries that a Congress-led government might be too scared to seek a settlement with Pakistan over India-occupied Kash­mir, fearing a backlash from the right.

Pakistan Peoples Party leader Senator Sherry Rahman, speaking at the Senate committee meeting, said it was perplexing that FM Qureshi was warning about Indian plans for another round of aggression against Pakistan, whereas the prime minister was hoping for the BJP’s victory in the elections.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi tells Senate panel it was PM’s decision to release captured Indian pilot

“A state has friendly relations with another state, not with a personality,” she said, expressing bewilderment over how the prime minister could express his “preference” of who would win in another country’s elections.

Senator Rahman Malik, another PPP leader, said it was wrong to assume that return to power of Mr Modi, who was Pakistan’s sworn enemy and who had talked of intervention in Balochistan, would be helpful to bilateral ties improvement.

The committee unanimously passed Senator Malik’s resolution against the BJP election manifesto that promises to strip Occupied Kashmir of special status by revoking Articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian constitution that provide for held Kashmir’s autonomous status.

Responding to legislators’ questions about release of captured Indian pilot Abhinandan, Mr Qureshi said that it was Prime Minister Khan’s decision. He clarified that only one Indian pilot was captured and initial reports of a second pilot being taken into custody were not true. It happened because of confusion during initial collection of reports from the ground, he added.

The meeting was chaired by Senator Mushahid Huss­ain Sayed, chairman of the Senate’s foreign affairs committee.

Reservations over UNSC resolution

In an in-camera briefing, the Senate committee was told that Pakistan had conveyed to the United States its reservations on the resolution tabled in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for the listing of outlawed Jaish-e-Moham­med chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.

A source disclosed that Foreign Minister Qureshi told the legislators that he had in a telephonic conversation conveyed to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that bypassing the set procedure for listing of individuals and entities through the UNSC 1,267 Sanctions Committee was inappropriate and counter-productive.

The US, with the support of the UK and France, tab­led a resolution in the UNSC for Azhar’s listing after China torpedoed a move in the Sanctions Committee following the Pulwama incident for designating him as a global terrorist.

Pakistan’s official stance has been that the resolution had been tabled in the UNSC at a time when the matter was already under consideration by the 1,267 Sanctions Committee and that efforts aimed at circumventing the established process would only weaken the 1,267 Sanctions Comm­ittee regime. Pakistan says that it wants to resolve this issue in the 1267 Sanctions Committee through consultations and with due respect for the member states. However, it believes that any action outside the committee will undermine the integrity of the sanctions regime and, therefore, must be avoided.

The sense of the committee was that the US should be asked to stop looking at Pakistan through Indian lens.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2019