Pakistan prepared to fight to the end over Kashmir, says PM Khan

PM Imran Khan said on Wednesday, Pakistan is prepared to fight to the end over Kashmir if necessary, from the Pakistani-controlled part of the disputed region.

Khan, who was in Kashmir to mark Pakistan’s independence day, accused India of trying to marginalize and radicalize the region’s Muslims. He also called New Delhi’s move to strip Indian-controlled Kashmir of its autonomy a strategic blunder by Indian PM Narendra Modi.

PM Imran Khan’s address comes a week after India’s parliament voted to reclassify the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir as a union territory, allowing New Delhi greater authority over the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

The territory is one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints. Claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, it has been the epicenter for more than 70 years of an often violent territorial struggle between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

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Khan declared himself a pacifist during his speech from Muzaffarabad, saying he believed in dialogue.

I don’t want war but it’s clear now that they don’t want to talk, he said. War will not help us at all.

We will fight to the end if it comes to that. To the very end. And at the end of that path, Kashmir will be independent, Khan added.

Khan said he had information that India was planning a false-flag operation in Kashmir. We know, the army knows it. We are prepared, Imran Khan said.

Pakistan was mobilizing Kashmiri populations from all over the world to protest in support of the Kashmiri people including in London.

Khan said, I am with my Kashmiri brothers at a time when they are facing their biggest crisis, he adding that he wanted to become Kashmir’s ambassador to the world.

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