'Pak military won't seek peace in J&K'

NEW DELHI: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has dismissed as ‘ridiculous’ the perception that only a military regime could solve the Kashmir issue, saying that the problem “allows them to live a luxurious life as the emporers of Rome did”.

“How ridiculous. I am sorry to say how ridiculous. Why would the military commit suicide by finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute which allows them to live as luxurious a life as the emperors of Rome did?” she said in an interview to a news channel when asked about the perception that only a military regime in Pakistan could solve the Kashmir issue.

“I don’t believe they have any intention to do that and I have never heard anything more ridiculous than that,” she told the channel in London, where she lives in exile.

Admitting that her government had a ‘hard policy’ on Kashmir, she claimed no ‘foreign’ militants were involved in the ‘struggle’ in Jammu and Kashmir during her regime. “We did support the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

We did want a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, but there were no foreign elements involved in the Kashmir struggle at that time. The insurgency was not at the level that it subsequently turned into with other elements coming in that were not Kashmiris. There was no bomb blast on the Indian Paliament. There were no Bombay blasts,” she said.

“That is all pre-1998, that is all pre-detonation,” she said referring to the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in the year. To a question on the nuclear proliferation network headed by AQ Khan, she said the disgraced Pakistani scientist was made a scapegoat to save ‘more powerful’ leaders.

“We believe that Mr Khan was asked to fall on a sword in order to save other more powerful people and in exchange he was pardoned and was also allowed to keep the 400 million dollars,” Ms Bhutto said.

Pakistani military had on Friday claimed that Mr Khan had run a ‘private’ proliferation network and had not named any ‘state functionary’ during his interrogation. It also said he had named only two ex-aides of Ms Bhutto in this connection.

In the interview, Ms Bhutto said her Pakistan Peoples Party had called for a parliamentary investigation into the sales of nuclear export “because we think it is very dangerous. We can’t allow people to get away with such kind of sales and we need to question Mr Khan to find out how these sales were made.”