Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday said Kashmir was an “integral part” of Pakistan’s identity and praised “martyr” Burhan Wani, a Hizbul Mujahideen commander killed by Indian security forces. Speaking at the inauguration of a two-day international parliamentary seminar on Kashmir in Islamabad, Sharif said Pakistan will continue to support the Kashmiri struggle for their right to self-determination. “Our hearts beat and sink with our Kashmiri brethren,” PTI reported Sharif as saying.

The prime minister added that other countries should urge India to change its policy towards the Valley. He said Pakistan had sent special envoys to countries to sensitise them about the situation in Kashmir. He said he had also raised the issue in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last year. “Seventy years of brutal repression and Kashmiri struggle in the face of that oppression have shown cries of freedom cannot be stifled by sounds of bullets,” the Dawn quoted the prime minister as saying.

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Sharif had written to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, seeking their intervention in what he referred to as “grave human rights violations” in Jammu and Kashmir. He had urged the five UNSC members – the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – “to fulfill their responsibility with regard to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute”.

Sharif’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, who also spoke at the seminar on Thursday, said that Kashmir and Palestine were the two longest-running unresolved global conflicts. “The presence of a large number of Indian troops in the Valley is a clear manifestation of Indian policy to use state terrorism to suppress the just struggle of Kashmiri people,” he added. While seeking international intervention Aziz said that the problem can only be resolved through “a fair and transparent plebiscite under the United Nations”.