The new Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, in difficulty on the inner scene, proposed to the authorities of New Delhi to take back the peace talks, suspended in 2019.
by Jacques Follorou and Carole Dieterich (Correspondence, New Delhi)
Between two ailments, you have to choose the least. The economic and social situation is so serious in Pakistan that the new government has decided to silence, for a moment, its grievances against India and to propose to start peace talks. The pitfalls of such a process are numerous, especially that of the fate reserved for the disputed territories of cashmere. Nevertheless, the hope of restoring trade relations with its neighbor, and thus to relieve a Pakistani company in great difficulty, seems to have convinced the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, to take a stand on this explosive subject.
No doubt to limit the impact of the announcement, he chose to express themselves with a foreign media, the Saudi channel Al-Arabiya. Interview then broadcast, on January 17, on the Pakistani public channel PTV. “Let us sit around the table,” he declares, “and have serious and sincere discussions to solve our burning problems, such as cashmere.” He says he is addressing “Indian leaders” and “Prime Minister Narendra Modi “. Mr. Sharif, who was in the United Arab Emirates for a two -day visit under the sign of commercial relations, assured that he had asked the Emirates, who “also maintain good relations with India”, to facilitate his initiative.
A few hours after the interview’s broadcast, Mr. Sharif’s office hastened to bring amender, adding that such talks would nevertheless be possible that if India restored the autonomy of the Indian cashmere , revoked on August 5, 2019 by the Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi. This Addenda recalls the extreme sensitivity of the subject. If India did not return to this qualified measure “of illegal annexation” by Islamabad, then the “negotiations will not be possible”, assured the office of the Pakistani Prime Minister on Twitter.
“L ‘Military establishment supports his approach “
Since the independence of the two countries, in 1947, India and Pakistan competed for the Himalayan region of Kashmir, of which they each control a part but which they both claim in its entirety. During the last seventy years, the two nuclear powers have delivered three wars (in 1947, 1965 and 1999) about this territory. A fourth confrontation accompanied the secession, in 1971, of the Bangladesh of Pakistan, but many see it as another seismic replica of the 1947 score.
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