Onus on India to create conducive environment for dialogue: Bilawal
Pakistan
Bilawal said he went to India for foreign ministers meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) - Minister for Foreign Affairs Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Friday said meaningful dialogue with India would be difficult unless it reviewed its unilateral actions of August 5, 2019, on Jammu and Kashmir.
The minister, in an interview with BBC, said in the circumstances onus was on India to create a conducive environment for bilateral talks.
Bilawal said he went to India for the foreign ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and did not request for a bilateral meeting with the Indian leadership.
He said his visit to India was a message that Pakistan saw the SCO as an important forum in the context of regional progress and stability.
The minister reiterated that Pakistan had no change in its stance on the issue of Kashmir.
To a question, he said Pakistan always condemned the violence as among all the SCO member states it had suffered the most casualties. "We consider terrorism a serious issue and we want to resolve it but the legitimate concerns should be separated from rhetoric," he said.
Responding to another question related to Pakistani politics, Bilawal said unfortunately in the present-day world hyper-partisan politics had emerged as populist leaders on the basis of their social media appeal were challenging norms of democracy.
The Pakistan People’s Party always believed that political parties should engage in dialogue and encourage consensus building, he added.
