LAHORE: Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML) President Khalid Masood Sindhu has said the Kashmir dispute remains unresolved in accordance with United Nations resolutions, and has urged the government to end what he described as its failure to effectively represent the Kashmiri cause.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Mr Sindhu said the issue must be raised forcefully at the international level instead of relying on routine diplomatic statements.
He said it was particularly disappointing that the martyrdom anniversary of Kashmiri Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani had passed the previous day without any meaningful response from Pakistan’s rulers.
He said leaders including Dukhtaran-e-Millat chairperson Syeda Aasiya Andrabi and Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik remained imprisoned, while Pakistan continued to limit its response to conventional diplomatic statements.
Mr Sindhu recalled that Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had described Kashmir as Pakistan’s jugular vein, and said successive governments had failed to pursue the issue with the urgency it required.
“India continues its propaganda against Pakistan, but our rulers have failed to effectively present the Kashmir case before the international community,” he said.
The PMML president argued that Pakistan had already demonstrated diplomatic capacity elsewhere. He cited the country’s role in helping facilitate a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, and its strengthening of defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.
With Pakistan also assuming the chairmanship of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, he questioned why Islamabad could not mobilise similar diplomatic effort to highlight the Kashmir dispute globally.
Mr Sindhu called for sustained international efforts toward the release of Kashmiri leaders held in Indian prisons, particularly Ms Andrabi and Mr Malik.
He also urged the government to ensure that Pakistani citizens were not imprisoned merely for expressing support for the Kashmir cause, saying such action was unjustified.
Kashmir has been the central bilateral dispute between Pakistan and India since 1947, with UN Security Council resolutions from the late 1940s calling for a plebiscite that was never held. Pakistan’s official position continues to reference those resolutions; India maintains the matter is bilateral and, since 2019, treats the constitutional status of the territory it administers as an internal affair.
Syed Ali Geelani, the Hurriyat figure named in the statement, was among the most prominent pro-Pakistan voices in Indian-administered Kashmir and spent long periods under detention before his death.
The Lahore Times notes that the statement represents the position of the PMML. Assessments of the government’s diplomatic performance contained in it are the party’s own, and no response from the Foreign Office was available at the time of publication.
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