JKLF leader calls for UK intervention to resolve the Kashmir conflict

London, 1 June, 1999

A leader of the pro-independence JKLF in UK has called for the British government to take a lead in persuading India and Pakistan to accept a UN-mandated plebiscite in Jammu Kashmir in order to 'lower the stakes of a nuclear confrontation' in the region. In a letter published in The Independent today, the JKLF general secretary, Azmat A Khan, stated that the UK Labour government had a moral and political responsibility in Kashmir since Kashmir was the last element of the British colonial legacy and since bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan have got nowhere over the last four decades.

He was commenting on the recent takeover of Kargil sector by Kashmiri freedom fighters which has seemingly brought Indian and Paksitani armed forces to the brink of war again.

"Within a year of India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices, the stakes of another war are raised in Kashmir again. The renewed escalation of the long-standing conflict in Kashmir should ring alarm bells everywhere", he warned.

"If a political settlement to issue of Kashmiri self-determination is not sought Kashmir will remain a flashpoint between the two nations making it world's most dangerous conflict after Kosovo", Mr Khan stated. He pointed out that there was good scope for outside intervention as a precedent has already been set in Kosovo and because the UN had already been involved in Kashmir in the form of a military observer. "What we now need is the will and courage to settle the dispute once and for all", Mr Khan wrote. He blamed the West for not putting much effort into persuading India and Pakistan to seek a settlement by involving the prime party (the Kashmiris) in the negotiations.

He called for the UN to play its part in ensuring that the unfettered right of self-determination including the right to independence was secured for the "long suffering people of Jammu-Kashmir on both sides of the Line-of-Control" and to avoid a nuclear confrontation in the region.