Bilawal says India wants hegemony, refuses to hold dialogue

WASHINGTON: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday said India had hegemonic designs and believed in acting outside the international law, as he criticised New Delhi for its refusal to hold talks.

Pakistan wanted peaceful relations with India, but New Delhi was supporting the BLA-like terrorist organisations, said Bilawal, who was addressing a gathering at the Middle East Institute.

He warned that the two countries could quickly move towards confrontation in the future. There would be no time for the world powers to intervene in the next Pakistan-India war, Bilawal noted.

It was an obvious reference to US President Donald Trump, who ensured a ceasefire between the nuclear-armed neighbours after the May 7-10 war.

Meanwhile, India is still adamant not to admit that the two countries stopped the hostilities after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Trump and agreed to stop aggression on his insistence.

INDUS WATERS TREATY

Bilawal – a former foreign minister who is leading a Pakistani delegation to present the country’s viewpoint to the world – said India was targeting the waters’ right of the 240 million people in Pakistan.

The Modi-led Indian government was forcing the future generations to fight wars over water, he said, as New Delhi put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance after the Pahalgam incident.

In this connection, the extremist BJP leaders are openly threatening to cut the water supply.  

That is why Bilawal listed the unilateral suspension of Indus Waters Treaty as grave act.

TERRORISM

The PPP chairman highlighted the fact that Pakistan was facing the challenge of terrorism in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In this connection, he cited the recent Khuzdar bombing in which dozens of children were killed or injured.

He told the audience that Islamabad was shared evidence of Indian involvement in terrorism and said the terrorist groups based in Afghanistan had been serious problem for Pakistan.

About the Pahalgam attack, Bilawal reminded the audience that Pakistan had offered an impartial investigation into the matter, but India declined the suggestion and declared Islamabad responsible for the act without any proof.

KASHIMIR AND TRUMP

No peace was possible without resolving the Kashmir dispute, Bilawal declared. He noted that even the Indians had been forced to say after the Pakistan-India war that Kashmir was a bilateral issue.

About the role played by the US president, he said India previously used to list Kashmir as a domestic problem, but Trump had cited the dispute as an international issue.  

Moreover, the PPP chairman said Trump had solving the Kashmir dispute. He was referring to desire expressed to play a role to sort out the long-standing problem.

REFUSING TO TALK

Earlier on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar said Pakistan was “ready but not desperate” for talks with arch-rival India.

Read more: Pakistan open, ‘not desperate’ for talks with India: Dar

“That’s not on. Nobody else is more serious than us. It takes two to tango,” he said, referring to comments by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar that the talks should only cover the issue of terrorism.