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Any solution to Kashmir will fall apart very quickly if Kashmiris not on board: Envoy Basit

Abdul Basit, Pakistan's High Commissioner to India.

Srinagar: Pakistan’s outgoing High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit has said that any solution to Kashmir Issue in which Kashmiris are not taken on board will “fall apart very quickly”.

“Any resolution to the dispute should be approved by the people of the region,” he said.

“As far as Islamabad is concerned, no solution is acceptable unless it is acceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Any other solution will fall apart very quickly,” Basit said in a interview to Chennai based The Hindu.

He further said that Pakistan is committed not to carry out the execution of death sentence awarded to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav by a military court till the hearing in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gives its verdict in the case.

Basit was appointed Islamabad’s envoy to New Delhi in 2014 just days before PM Narendra Modi assumed charge.

“There is a process that is ongoing, and if Jadhav’s appeal were rejected (by the court), that would be the time for the Army chief or the President to reconsider the sentence against him. He has been tried, he has been convicted, and he has the right to appeal. If that is rejected, then he has the right to submit an application for clemency to the Army chief, and if he denies it, then to the President. So there is room for a rethink there,” Basit said.

India had approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on May 8 soon after a military court in Pakistan awarded death sentence to Jadhav, a former Navyman, on espionage charges.

Pakistan claims that Jadhav was arrested from Balochistan in March last year. However, India maintains that he was kidnapped from Iran and taken to Pakistan by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

On Jama’at-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, Basit said that his country has taken the action required against him.

“No individual in Pakistan is above the law. It is not the first time he has been put under house arrest, the law will move against him. At the end of the day it is for the courts to decide,” Basit asserted.

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