MUNICH: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that the agenda given by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his foreign office to diplomatically isolate Pakistan is a dream which will never come true.
“The world knows Pakistan was not involved in the recent attack in Pulwama, Kashmir,” Qureshi said, adding, “India is going to get nothing from the blame-game.”
Qureshi was speaking to the media in Munich. FM Qureshi is currently in Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference. Senior state officials and international security experts are taking part in the conference to discuss global security challenges.
Responding to the allegations of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pulwama district, which killed at least 44 Indian security personnel, Qureshi said Pakistan has always advocated peace with neighbouring countries and Prime Minister Imran Khan’s peace overture to India was on record. He urged India to refrain from hurling baseless accusations against Pakistan.
He condemned the incident and said, “We have never been in favour of violence. This is our clear policy.” He invited India to share evidence, if it has any, of Pakistan’s involvement. He said baseless accusations will never achieve anything. “It never has in the past either.”
India revoked its most favoured status to Pakistan on Friday. The move came a day after the attack in Pulwama.
Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced the decision while briefing the media in Delhi. He said that India will take all diplomatic steps to ensure complete isolation of Pakistan in the international community.
Jaitley said that those helping and supporting terrorists will “pay a very heavy price.”
The most favoured nation status is given a trade partner to ensure non-discriminator trade between the two countries.
Indian granted Pakistan the status in 1996. Both India and Pakistan are signatories to the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which means they have to treat each other and other WTO member countries as favoured trading partners in terms of custom duties.
