Azad Kashmir PM calls for more aid to Pak flood-hitJEDDAH – Saudi Arabia's status in the region and the world makes it an ideal mediator between Pakistan and India in the contentious Kashmir region. This is the view of Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir during his visit here last week. India calls the region controlled by Pakistan as “Pak-occupied Kashmir”. “Saudi Arabia can help solve the biggest issue in the South Asian region. The Kingdom can play a very effective and important role in the solution of the Kashmir issue because of its economic and social relations with countries in the region,” said Khan. He said the Kingdom has a big say in the Muslim World League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and the OPEC. He added that the political situation in Kashmir should be solved because it is surrounded by nuclear powers. “If this issue is not solved the region will be in great danger from possible nuclear war. The lives of over one billion people will be threatened.” “We want to solve this problem and want India to leave its ego aside and come to the table for talks.” Khan, who was in Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah, held a meeting with Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali, President of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), on the disaster in Kashmir and Pakistan. He thanked Saudi Arabia and the IDB for their help and donations for displaced people. He told Saudi Gazette that he had a very fruitful and positive meeting with the IDB chief. “We invited him to visit Azad Kashmir to discuss the region's financial problems. Our resource backbone is Pakistan, but Pakistan is in crisis, so it is very difficult for it to help us at the moment.” He explained that Azad Kashmir has been hit by a number of calamities. There has been continued strife and skirmishes between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region over the past 20 years; in 1992 there were the floods; then an earthquake; and now a flood disaster once again. He said Pakistan-controlled Kashmir has suffered losses of $150 million. In the entire area, a total of $2 billion is needed for both physical and social reconstruction, he added. He said almost 150,000 Kashmiris have been displaced because of the floods, which have destroyed homes, roads, hydro-electricity stations, electricity and water systems, the timber trade, mineral sites, and herbal sites. He said he is planning meetings with the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and other development agencies, to ask for help. He said the strategy is to use any donated cash to start reconstruction. “At the moment we have asked for prefab houses, tents, sheets, warm clothes and blankets. Saudi Arabia is sending relief goods every week and because of that we are able to take care of the people. But our main problem is that we don't have proper homes and soon winter will start.”
