New York: Addressing the world leaders at the high-level United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on September 20 raked up the Kashmir issue once again, saying “India and Pakistan have not established peace between them yet”.
“India and Pakistan, after having established their sovereignty and independence 75 years ago, still haven’t established peace and solidarity between one another. This is much unfortunate. We hope and pray that a fair and permanent peace and prosperity will be established in Kashmir,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan’s comment comes almost a week after he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand last week. At the SCO summit, both leaders reviewed the full range of bilateral relations and discussed ways to deepen cooperation in diverse sectors.
This is not the first time Erdogan has talked about Kashmir. Earlier in 2020, in an address at Pakistan’s Parliament, Erdogan had compared “the struggle of Kashmiri people with that of fight by Turkish people against foreign domination during the World War I”.
Following this, India had criticized his comments and asked him not to interfere in India’s internal affairs.
Shehbaz to interact with Biden on UNGA sidelines
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will get a chance to interact with US President Joe Biden this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York, according to a Foreign Office (FO) official.
Sharif is among the world leaders attending the UNGA session who has been invited by President Biden to a reception in New York, The Express Tribune quoted the official as saying.
Although there won’t be any bilateral meeting between the two leaders, the premier will interact with the US president informally during the reception.
This will be the first interaction between Biden and a sitting Pakistani Prime Minister since the President took office in early 2021.
