No point in talking to India: PM Khan on Kashmir crisis

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan affirmed on Wednesday that he would no longer seek dialogue with Indian officials over the escalating issue of occupied Kashmir. 

In an interview with The New York Times, PM Khan complained about what he described as repeated rebuffs from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his offers for dialogue, both before and after the August 5 crackdown on the disputed territory of Kashmir.

“There is no point in talking to them. I mean, I have done all the talking. Unfortunately, now when I look back, all the overtures that I was making for peace and dialogue, I think they took it for appeasement,” PM Khan said during the interview, at the prime minister’s office in Islamabad. “There is nothing more that we can do.”

Prime Minister Khan dubbed India’s Modi as “a fascist and Hindu supremacist” who intends to eradicate Kashmir’s Muslim population and populate the region with Hindus. “The most important thing is that eight million people’s lives are at risk. We are all worried that ethnic cleansing and genocide are about to happen there,” Khan said.

He also expressed concern that India might undertake a deceptive “false-flag operation” in Kashmir to try to justify military action against Pakistan.

Pakistan would be forced to respond then, asserted the prime minister. “You are looking at two nuclear-armed countries eyeball to eyeball, and anything can happen.”