00001966 Speech of the Foreign Minister of Pakistan in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference of 1966.

00001966 Speech of the Foreign Minister of Pakistan in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference of 1966.

Since the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting in London in June last year, the world political situation has become grave and is a cause of great anxiety to all of us. While there is evidence that the confrontation between the East and the West in Europe is gradually being replaced by a desire to co-exist, and a new pattern is emerging in their relationship, the same is, unfortunately, not true of the situation in Asia. Indeed. the areas of tension in the world now seem to have shifted to Asia, and pose the gravest threat to world peace. Pakistan itself has passed through a period of crisis during the past year. It will be recalled that some incidents took place between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch in May 1965. Thanks, however, to the mediatory efforts and good offices of Her Majesty's Government, Pakistan and India succeeded in evolving a self-operating arrangement for determination of the dispute through an international tribunal.

Notwithstanding the progress that had been made in the peaceful resolution of the dispute over the Rann of Kutch, a very much wider and far more serious military conflict took place between Pakistan and India in September last year. After 17 days of bitter fighting, the two countries accepted a proposal for a cease-fire as embodied in the Security Council resolution of 20 September 1965. In this resolution the Security Council also decided, among other things, to consider what steps could be taken to assist the two countries towards the settlement of their underlying problem.

It was in the spirit of this resolution that President Mohmmad Ayub Khan signed, with the Prime Minister of India the late Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri, a nine-point declaration at Tashkent on 10 January this year. Under the Tashkent Declaration, both India and Pakistan agreed to make a fresh start in resolving their basic dispute in order to establish peace in the subcontinent on a stable basis.

The purpose of the Tashkent Declaration, as we see it, was to provide a framework within which peaceful and good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan could be established. While the first steps have been taken towards normalizing Indo-Pakistan relations-the armed personnel of the two countries have been withdrawn to the position they held prior to 5 August 1965, the High Commissioners of the two countries have resumed their respective duties, a ministerial meeting between India and Pakistan has been held in Rawalpindi in March-the principal cause of the Indo-Pakistan differences unfortunately remains as before. This, as you know, is the dispute over the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

`Pakistan remains ready as ever to hold further talks with India at any level, official or ministerial, provided the objective of both countries is to have meaningful discussions on all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, the basic cause of the conflict.

Indeed, the Tashkent Declaration did not visualize that either side would insist on the exclusion, explicitly or by implication, of any outstanding issue from the ambit of purposeful negotiations between the two countries, much less the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which finds mention in the very first paragraph of the Declaration. It will be recalled that in the communique issued at the conclusion of the Indo-Pakistan ministerial meeting held at Rawalpindi on 1 and 2 March this year, both sides agreed that all disputes between Pakistan and India should be resolved to promote and strengthen peace between them. This agreement was welcomed by the Government of Pakistan as being fully in accord with the Tashkent Declaration, which was signed in order to establish peace between India and Pakistan on a firm basis and to remove the cause of conflict between them.

While each side has its own views on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, it is scarcely possible for Pakistan to enter into negotiations in the face of the assertion that the Indian-held part of the State is an integral part of India, or that the settlement of the dispute is irrelevant to the establishment of friendly relations between the two countries. We continue to hope, nonetheless, that the Indian Government will realise the inconsistency between assertions of this nature and these assurances that talks between the two countries must be, as they say, 'purposeful and serious.

I wish to reiterate that the Government of Pakistan remains willing to enter into negotiations with India for the settlement of all outstanding disputes and differences on a just and honourable basis,

Year after year we have brought to the attention of Commonwealth leaders at these meetings the existence of the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. Almost as frequently we have had the feeling that some members would prefer to see this dispute under the rug.