Pakistan’s former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri on Friday said that New Delhi and Islamabad would have been able to resolve the Kashmir issue and achieve peace if former prime minister Manmohan Singh had visited the Asian neighbour in 2006.
“The truth is that India and Pakistan can achieve peace. We were close, if only Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had come to Pakistan in 2006, he would have signed the Sir Creek issue and the Kashmir issue was already 85-90 percent resolved. But unfortunately, there were elections in India at that time in UP and some other states,” Kasuri told ANI here.
The former foreign minister added that the conditions in Pakistan later on had also impeded the peace process.
“Later, when we asked him again in March, at that time the Lawyers’ agitation and Chief Justice movement had started in Pakistan. But, I did not lose confidence because the bottom-line of both states had come on record,” he said.
Kasuri said he believed there would be peace between the two neighbours because the ground work for that had already been laid.
“I am bringing out a book and I will tell how close we were to normal. We didn’t work on wishes, we really worked hard. We don’t mind if a new government takes credit, but the wheel cannot be reinvented,” he said.
–ANI