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| Azad gives 100 marks to Pak’s ‘Mr Ten Percent’ | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | Mar 6
The Mr Ten Percent of Pakistan politics though has become an eyesore of the separatists but is getting 100 percent marks from the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of Pakistan Peoples Party and widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Butto, is popularly known as Mr Ten Percent for pressuring the leading industrialists and businessmen of the country to pay him ten per cent share when his wife was the Prime Minister. Zardari has many cases pending against him on these charges.
His sudden rise on the power radar following assassination of his illustrious wife, has seen Zardari talking Kashmir quite often. While his statement of setting Kashmir aside and looking forward to trade ties between India and Pakistan has enraged the separatists, the mainstream political leaders are finding this mindset encouraging.
Particularly, the Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad over the past one week has spoken thrice in support of Zardari. Today again, Azad has said that he was happy to find positive change in the thinking of the Pakistani leadership and hoped that they would not change it under any pressure.
Talking to media persons who accompanied him on a visit to the upcoming township for Kashmiri Pandit migrants at Jagti in Nagrota near here today, the Chief Minister, in response to a question on Co-Chairperson of Pakistan People's Party, Asif Ali Zardari's recent statement on Kashmir, said that it was encouraging to see that the change in the thinking process in Pakistan was not restricted to an individual but the country's leadership as such was moving ahead of its stated position for the last 60 years. He said Zardari had spoken what President Musharraf had been saying for the last few years. He said former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharief had also spoken in positive tone.
"We were apprehensive that the recently held elections in Pakistan might throw up a government that will reverse the policy of the present government and go back to the old position", the Chief Minister said, adding, however, that Mr. Zardari's statement was a welcome development. He said improvement in bilateral relationship was not only beneficial for India and Pakistan but for the world at large.
Mr. Azad said that India had always been maintaining that relations with Pakistan should not be allowed to be hostage to a single issue. He said trade, commerce, tourism, people to people contact and cultural and educational exchanges must go on while dialogue process was on.
The Chief Minister said that post 9/11, there was no space for terrorism in the world. He said the world had woken up to the scourge after bomb blasts in US, UK, Saudi Arabia and other countries who now realize how India was feeling due to several decades of terrorism. He said opinion against terror was building and gaining momentum internationally. In Jammu & Kashmir also, he said, people were fed up with violence and thinking was gaining ground among them that development, not violence was in their interest. |
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