Priyanka Tiwari
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Suspense crime, Digital Desk : Pakistan's Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, has made a provocative statement, declaring the historic Simla Agreement with India "over" and asserting that Islamabad will now pursue the Kashmir dispute through international channels. This marks a significant rhetorical shift from the long-standing, albeit often contentious, bilateral framework established by the 1972 pact.
Speaking in what reports suggest was Pakistan's Parliament, Asif's comments signal a potential formal departure from the Simla Agreement's core principle: that all disputes between India and Pakistan, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, should be settled by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations, without external interference.
The Simla Agreement was signed by then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto following the 1971 war. It has, at least officially, guided diplomatic interactions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors regarding Kashmir for decades.
India has consistently maintained that Kashmir is an internal matter and that any dialogue must be bilateral, as per the Simla Agreement and the subsequent Lahore Declaration. Pakistan, on the other hand, has frequently sought to involve international bodies or third-party mediators, a stance that Asif's recent statement now emphatically underscores.
By claiming the Simla Agreement is defunct, Pakistan's Defence Minister is signaling a renewed and more aggressive push to bring the Kashmir issue to global forums, potentially seeking intervention or raising it more forcefully at the United Nations and other international platforms. This move is likely to further strain the already fragile relations between New Delhi and Islamabad and could be seen as an attempt to rally international opinion following India's 2019 reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir.
The international community's reaction to this declaration remains to be seen, as most countries have traditionally supported a bilateral resolution to the Kashmir dispute.
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