Give people of J&K a fair chance to decide their future. If they feel they are happier with India, so be it: Pak envoy

Pakistan’s high commissioner Abdul Basit at his office in New Delhi.
Picture by Sankarshan Thakur

HIGH COMMISSIONER BASIT SPEAKS:  

Sankarshan Thakur, TT, New Delhi, Sept. 24: Pakistan has asserted it would take no blame for last Sunday's attack on the Uri army camp and pinned the plunge in bilateral ties on Kashmiri unrest triggered by the killing of Hizb-ul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani instead.

"We were on the right track even after Pathankot, but then July 8 happened (the day Wani was killed by security forces) and you know what has happened in Kashmir since. We lost momentum," Abdul Basit, Pakistan's envoy to India, told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview.

In what may be significant beyond the current turbulence, Basit said it wasn't Islamabad's case that Kashmir should necessarily turn the colour of Pakistan on the political map.

"We have no desire to be irredentist (or, advocating claims over territory) in our approach. What we are saying is that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be given a fair chance to determine their future. If they believe they are happier with India and they belong there, so be it, Pakistan would not have a problem. But to determine their future is their right.... Kashmir is not about territory, it is not a territorial dispute, 12 million people are involved."

On his sense of where India and Pakistan stood today, high commissioner Basit said: "We are in a tough place, but we are not thinking in war terms. War is not a solution, war creates more problems. We should not allow war hysteria to dominate our discourse. We have to be mature. We can perhaps afford not to talk to each other for some time, but addressing our many challenges can only happen through dialogue and peaceful means. I hope we are able to retrieve the ground diplomatically. I am a diplomat and an optimist. I hope diplomacy wins."

He seemed unbothered by India's description of Pakistan, post-Uri, as the "Ivy League of terrorism" and brushed it aside as "verbosity", no more. "We can also come up with such catchy phrases but that doesn't serve any purpose, inter-state relations are not about verbosity," he said.

Basit was opening up at length for the first time since Pakistan raised its international pitch on Kashmir and the pre-dawn Uri assault which left 18 Indian jawans dead and 20 injured.

Asked pointedly to respond to India's charge that Pakistan had effected the Uri camp carnage, Basit bluntly said: "One thing is for sure, and I want to tell your readers this: Pakistan has nothing to do with the Uri attack."

To a follow-up prod that the attackers had infiltrated Uri from the Pakistani side, he said: "We do not know, we do not know. We are committed to not allowing our territory to be used for violence anywhere in the world. This is what I iterated to your foreign secretary when I was called in the other day."

To a related question on why Pakistan allowed voices such as JuD chief Hafiz Sayeed and Hizb-ul chief Sayeed Salahuddin to spew belligerence on India from its soil, Basit said: "I do see your point. But such voices you'll find in India too. Our policy is not driven by their fiery speeches and neither is yours, I would like to believe."

Of unconfirmed but persistent reports on social media that Indian forces had "avenged Uri" in a covert cross-border operation on militant camps, Basit feigned no knowledge. "I am not aware of any such thing," he said. "I do not believe any such thing happened. Let me say here that Pakistan is capable of defending itself, but I wouldn't like to think things will escalate to that pass."

The burden of Basit's responses through the hour-long interview came served on a familiar dish: Kashmir. He said it was "important for India to understand" that Kashmir is the factor that keeps "bedevilling our relationship and bringing mistrust between us".

He wouldn't agree that Pakistan's renewed efforts to internationalise Kashmir and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's reference to Burhan Wani as a "young leader of the Kashmiri intifada" from the UNGA stage constituted an avoidable provocation to New Delhi.

"It is not about Burhan Wani, it is about Kashmir," Basit repeatedly emphasised. "To fix everything now on Burhan Wani is of no help. The way Kashmiris came out for his funeral and what has been happening thereafter is serious and spontaneous. What is happening in Kashmir tells us how important it is for us to deal with this problem. You cannot brush Kashmir under the carpet, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have to be given the right to determine their future at some point. We cannot ignore what is happening."

Close to 90 people have been killed in clashes and encounters with security forces since Kashmir turned tumultuous in July. More than 12,000 lie injured, nearly a hundred of them in peril of losing their eyesight to pellet-gun hits. The Valley also served its longest continuous term under curfew and security and communications restrictions during this period.

"Even your political parties say Kashmir is a political problem and needs to be politically resolved. India and Pakistan are both agreed that Jammu and Kashmir is a dispute that we need to resolve, you have your discourse and we have our narrative, not talking Kashmir will take us nowhere, Kashmiris have to be allowed to decide what they want for themselves," Basit said.

Was he advocating a plebiscite? Was he arguing that Kashmiris should become the third party in a bilateral dialogue? "We have never called Kashmiris the third party, we believe they are major stakeholders in deciding their future destiny and they have the right to determine what that is to be."

On Balochistan, the new (un) savoury dragged on to the bilateral table, Basit was brief but curt. "Balochistan is not represented by a few misguided elements," he said. "We may have some socio-economic issues there, like in other parts of Pakistan, but the people of Balochistan are as patriotic and as committed to Pakistan as I or any other Pakistani."