Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar will address the annual UN General Assembly session on September 22.
At the weekly news briefing here on Thursday, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said the caretaker premier would be accompanied by interim Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani during the visit to New York.
She said the interim prime minister would outline Pakistan’s perspective on a range of regional and global issues of concern, including Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which was amongst the longstanding unresolved items on the UN Agenda. He would elaborate on the significant measures being taken by the caretaker government to consolidate Pakistan’s economic recovery and efforts to mobilize domestic and external investments, the spokesperson added.
Ms Baloch said Kakar would also participate in a summit on the sustainable development goals and other high level meetings to be organised under the auspices of UNGA.
She said these would afford valuable platforms to deliberate on effective measures required at the global level to addressing the most pressing economic and development challenges confronting the global South in the wake of Covid-19, geopolitical contestations and climate change.
The spokesperson said that on the sidelines of the UNGA, the caretaker PM would also hold bilateral meetings with counterparts from various countries as well as heads of international organisations, philanthropic organisations and corporate leaders.
Responding to a question, the spokesperson said Jammu and Kashmir was an internationally recognised disputed territory whose final disposition was to be made in accordance with the relevant UNSC resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiri people.
She said it was also an established fact that Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan shown in an Indian map are under Pakistan’s control and part of its official political map, pending the final disposition of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. In that backdrop, she said that any map showing the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India was legally untenable and factually incorrect.
She expressed the hope that “our international partners would pay due attention to these facts.”
When asked about Pakistan Afghanistan transit trade agreement, the spokesperson said that Pakistan has been implementing it in good faith. “We have facilitated our landlocked neighbor in its access to the world in terms of trade and we will continue to do so.”
She, however, said that there have been some concerns of Pakistan regarding misuse of the transit trade agreement on which we will engage with the Afghan authorities so that these practices do not continue.
The spokesperson said that Pakistan was concerned about security threat emanating from Afghan soil. “It is important for the interim Afghan government to ensure that their territory is not used to threaten Pakistan,” she concluded.
