Summary Yusuf Buch, 95, was special assistant to former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972-77.
NEW YORK (APP):Yusuf Buch, a former Pakistani cabinet minister and diplomat, has said that Kashmiris will not “forsake” their struggle to achieve freedom from India, saying that objective has been “sanctified” by the suffering of the occupied people of the disputed state.
“We will not forsake our goals. Those have been sanctified by suffering. The blood of our martyrs and the tears of the bereaved among us have put them beyond compromise,” he said in a meeting in New York with Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri activist and Secretary-General of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, according to a press release issued on Saturday.
“Yes, we have made errors, we have miscalculated, we have not organized our campaign with the care it should have been. But we can correct our mistakes,” Buch added.
Yusuf Buch, 95, was special assistant to former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from 1972-77, with the rank of a federal minister. He also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to Switzerland in 1977. Later, Buch joined the United Nations as senior adviser to the Secretary-General, a post he held for 14 years. He is an expert on Kashmir.
He called as “fiction” New Delhi’s claim of Kashmir’s accession to India, saying, “The fact that the act was performed by a feudal ruler who had fled his capital in the face of popular revolt is well established in the official record of the dispute. If India were as certain of the legal strength of its claim as it professes to be, would it not agree to the whole question being examined by the World Court? A process lasting a few months would vindicate its position and bring it resounding victory! But India knows that an impartial investigation would be fatal to its claim. Hence the loud, indignant insistence on “sovereignty’…”
Referring to the Indian claims that United Nations resolutions on Kashmir were outdated, Buch said, “As soon as the dispute arose, an overarching promise was made by India to Kashmir in all available forums“ in solemn public declaration, in submissions to the United Nations, in communications to Pakistan and even to other governments. This was done in 1947 when India first marched its troops into Kashmir and it was repeated a number of times in the following years.
“Yes, this promise is now seventy years old. But does its age diminish its relevance or reduce its applicability? To assert so is to concede primacy to the law of the jungle. Promises may be forgotten, dishonorably or otherwise, by those who make them but they are never forgotten or lost sight of by those to whom or for whose benefit they are made. This is true as much of international relations as it is in daily life. The tone and content of the promise is apparent in numerous statements made by the Indian leadership at home and abroad."
