NEW YORK: Pakistan has called for “new thinking” to shape effective approaches in order to stop conflicts, addressing disputes such as Kashmir and Palestine and building peace in conflict-hit nations.
Ambassador Munir Akram told the UNSC which held a high-level debate centred on preventing conflict and building and sustaining peace that there is need of a comprehensive and integrated approach which offers regional and global support to national efforts for conflict prevention and dispute resolution.
Such a strategy, the Ambassador said, must include: economic and financial help to the countries in distress – to create jobs and generate trust and hope; capacity-building, to enable governments to provide the basic services needed by locals.
Ambassador Akram called for an end to external exploitation, which fuels terrorism and violence; good faith efforts at resolution of conflicts – at the regional levels; local and international support for security and counter-terrorism operations; and a review of ill-considered sanctions that mostly punish the poor people. He said that the consequences of foreign occupation are nowhere as clear as in occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Palestine. He called on the UNSC to end Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.
While the concept of nationally-led violence prevention strategies, as outlined in the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace, was valuable, Akram quoted Pakistan’s experience in fighting terrorism, noting that “Pakistan’s updated National Action Plan (NAP) to combat terrorism, called ‘Azam-e-Istehkam’, relies on working with local people to exclude and eliminate violence extremism and terrorism.”
He said that in Pakistan’s experience too, fighting terrorism on their border regions was successful because of the support, help and participation of the local people.
