By IRNA
Srinagar, India : Chief Minister of Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad has said that he was happy to find positive change in the thinking of the Pakistani leadership and hoped that they would not change it under any pressure.
Talking to media persons who accompanied him on a visit to the upcoming township for Kashmiri Pandit migrants at Jagti in Nagrota near here Thursday, the Chief Minister, in response to a question on Co-Chairperson of Pakistan People’s Party, Asif Ali Zardari’s recent statement on Kashmir, said that it was encouraging to see that the change in the thinking process in Pakistan was not restricted to an individual but the country’s leadership as such was moving ahead of its stated position for the last 60 years.
He said Zardari had spoken what President Musharraf had been saying for the last few years.
He added that former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharief had also spoken in positive tone.
“We were apprehensive that the recently held elections in Pakistan might throw up a government that will reverse the policy of the present government and go back to the old position”, the Chief Minister said, adding, however, that Zardari’s statement was a welcome development.
He said improvement in bilateral relationship was not only beneficial for India and Pakistan but for the world at large.
Azad said that India had always been maintaining that relations with Pakistan should not be allowed to be hostage to a single issue.
He said trade, commerce, tourism, people to people contact and cultural and educational exchanges must go on while dialogue process was on.
The Chief Minister said that post 9/11, there was no space for terrorism in the world.
He said the world had woken up to the scourge after bomb blasts in US, UK, Saudi Arabia and other countries who now realize how India was feeling due to several decades of terrorism.
He said opinion against terror was building and gaining momentum internationally.
In Jammu & Kashmir also, he said, people were fed up with violence and thinking was gaining ground among them that development, not violence was in their interest.