Resolution of Kashmir issue: Pakistan committed to UN resolutions: foreign office

Pakistan still regards United Nations resolutions a way out of Kashmir dispute with India, the Foreign Ministry says in a statement that hardly matches fresh initiatives both countries have taken during past four years after decades of tension over Himalayan valley.
"Pakistan is committed to the UN resolutions...our stated position is the same (as it was)," Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Sadiq told reporters at a weekly briefing here on Wednesday. Nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India returned from a brink of fourth war in 2002 to launch, within two following years, what is called a composite dialogue process to ease anxiety primarily on the region known as a paradise on the earth.
Authorities from both sides have held several rounds of talks on issues ranging from exchange of citizens betraying into each other's territory to nuclear missile testing since President Pervez Musharraf and then India Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed on initiating confidence building measures (CBMs) in January 2004.
Musharraf proposed several times to set aside the UN resolutions that envisaged a right of plebiscite for Kashmiris to determine whether they wanted to be controlled by Pakistan or India.
But the spokesperson said the suggestions to go for 'unconventional' measures to resolve Kashmir were to force New Delhi onto the negotiating table, a purpose he claimed was well accomplished.
India accepted negotiating Kashmir with Pakistan as 'a bitter pill' from 2004 after denying the disputed status of the region for more than half a century. "The out of the box measures were also within the parameters of the UN resolutions," Sadiq said what the Pakistan (government) had been shying away to say for four years despite political opposition.
Talks are apparently moving ahead but their pace is much slower than both nuclear-armed South Asian rivals anticipated in the beginning. He said that Islamabad supported 'politically and diplomatically' the freedom struggle of Kashmiris, a rhetoric that was very common when Pakistan was covertly backing armed insurgency inside the valley in 80s and 90s.
INDIAN BID FOR PERMANENT UNSC SEAT: Pakistan was not in favour of any expansion of the UN Security Council, Sadiq said two days after visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown advocated the position for India in New Delhi. Almost a fortnight ago, China also blessed the Indian bid with the similar backing.
"We (Pakistan) are against the creation of new centers of privilege. We support just and equitable reform that corresponds to the interests of all, not just a few member states," Sadiq said.
INDO-ISRAEL DEFENSE COOPERATION: Islamabad expressed concern over a recent defence deal between India and Israel. "We are definitely concerned," Sadiq said. "This (sub-continent) is the region which doesn't need the introduction of new weapons but more food and social development.
He told a questioner that President Pervez Musharraf was still holding the 'baton of command' in Pakistan's war on terror and military chief was just a part of it.
Sadiq dismissed a media report that Iranian government wanted to sign a gas export deal with future elected government rather than caretaker establishment, clarifying that there had not been any diplomatic such intimation.
He, however, found it hard to defend what was being taken as an unnecessary Europe visit of beleaguered President Musharraf at the time when Pakistan was engulfed in a political upheaval.