Pakistan to attend conference on Palestine in Tehran

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will participate in a consultative conference on Palestine being held in Iran’s capital Tehran on December 23, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.

“We will continue to support international efforts to bring an end to Israel’s ongoing campaign against the Palestinian people,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said at a weekly press briefing.

The FO spokesperson said Pakistan remained deeply concerned over the ongoing campaign of brutality and large-scale massacre unleashed upon the people of Palestine.

“We strongly condemn Israel’s ongoing war on hospitals and its barbarous bulldozing of tents in the courtyard and vicinity of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza that crushed to death numerous Palestinians including women, children, and wounded patients under treatment,” she said.

She said the crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestine were a “haunting stain on the conscience of humanity”, the official news agency reported.

Baloch said Pakistan called for holding Israel accountable for its actions and the United Nations Security Council to take immediate effective action to impose a ceasefire and lift the inhumane siege against Gaza.

She expressed concern over the recent statements made by senior Israeli officials rejecting the creation of a viable and independent state of Palestine.

“Such statements, especially the comments on the ‘Oslo Accords’, reflect the true intentions of the Israeli occupation authorities, their disregard for international law and commitments and rejection of a just resolution of the Palestine’s question,” she said.

The FO spokesperson said Pakistan firmly believed that the only just solution to the Palestinian question was the creation of an independent, viable, sovereign, and contiguous Palestinian state along pre-June 1967 borders with Al-Quds-Al-Sharif as its capital.

Baloch said Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi this month issued 166 visas to Indian Hindu pilgrims for visits to Shree Katas Raj Temple in Punjab and for participation in annual celebrations at Shadani Darbar Hayat Pitafi, Sindh.

Pakistan, she said, also issued visas to 3,000 Sikh pilgrims from India on the occasion of the 554th birthday celebrations of Baba Guru Nanak this month to visit Pakistan from November 25 to December 4, 2023.

“Under the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974, Pakistan welcomes and facilitates thousands of Sikh and Hindu pilgrims from India to visit Pakistan to attend various religious festivals and occasions every year,” she said.

She said the issuance of pilgrimage visas was in line with Pakistan’s commitment to facilitate visits to religious shrines and promote interfaith harmony. This year, 6,824 visas were issued to Indian pilgrims visiting Pakistan.

On the situation in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the FO spokesperson said Pakistan would continue to extend political, diplomatic, and moral support to the Kashmiri brothers and sisters for the just and peaceful settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolutions.