The World Order Must Be Rule-based: Azad Jammu & Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan

Azad Jammu & Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan said the world order must be rule-based and not dictated by realpolitik driven by jingoism, xenophobia and warmongering.

MIRPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Feb, 2018 ) :Azad Jammu & Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan said the world order must be rule-based and not dictated by realpolitik driven by jingoism, xenophobia and warmongering.

If the international rule of law does not become the norm, the world would, once again, plunge into a catastrophic global war. Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan expressed these views while addressing students and faculty at the Oxford University late Monday, says a message released to the media here on Tuesday.

In a two-hour session that included an extended question and answers session, President Masood Khan said that the United Nations, which should be a symbol of rule-based global governance for peace and security on the basis of the Charter, has failed miserably in resolving the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

The United Nations, the President said, is bound by Article 1 of its Charter, to "maintain international peace and security, and to take effective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace." The UN, the President said, should not shun its responsibility on Kashmir simply because some powerful countries, in collusion with India, want to crush and block the will of Kashmiri people to determine their political identity and future.

Sardar Masood Khan said that 20 million people of Jammu and Kashmir want to exercise their right to self-determination and take a decision on the accession of their state.

Historically, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have always been part of Pakistan and, as a whole, wanted to make, Pakistan their homeland.

But India, through its 70 year-long occupation wants to deny their inalienable right, he added. Masood Khan strongly quashed rumours and fabrications about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

"It [CPEC] is a corridor, open to all, not a cul-de-sac or a silo", he said. The President said that China has never been a colonial power and Pakistan is a strong, pivotal country in the comity of nations.

"East India Company", he said, was an imperial legacy. The CPEC, he said, stems from the globalizing economic connectivity driven by the mega Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This era of connectivity is not about domination, rather participation on equal footing for shared prosperity and security for all, not a chosen few, he said.

Sardar Masood Khan also told his audience how AJK was investing heavily in quality higher education and making endeavors to become an economic engine by participating in CPEC and developing infrastructure, tourism, industry, agriculture, health, and telecommunications sectors.

He invited entrepreneurs of the Kashmiri and Pakistani diaspora community to invest in Azad Kashmir's projects and assured them that the state was becoming the most abundant source of hydropower generation, with the projection of six to seven thousand MW electricity production by 2025.