India and Pakistan were “pretty close” to resolving the Kashmir issue, in phases, during the regime of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday.
“They came pretty close on resolving the Kashmir issue – phased movement… referendum during the time of Vajpayee,” Khan said in response to a question during his appearance at the US Institute of Peace, a US-Congress funded think-tank. He, however, refrained from elaborating on the solution, saying it’s a sensitive issue. But he insisted that Kashmir is the “bone of contention” between India and Pakistan.
“India is a country which we’ve had turbulent relationship with. Unfortunately, because of one issue of Kashmir, whenever, we have tried, whenever relationship has started to move in the right direction with India, some incident happens and that’s all related to Kashmir, and we go back to square one,” he said.
Deflecting a question on Jamaat-ud Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed, who was recently arrested for the seventh time, Khan said it is in the interest of Pakistan that “we do not allow any armed militant groups to operate” in our country.
The Pulwama attack, he claimed, was “an indigenous thing.”
