19 September 2009: IANS
London, Sep 19 (IANS) Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said here that his country wants India to be part of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan group, a media report said Friday.
“We want India to be the part of Friends of Democratic Pakistan and will encourage any Indian investment in this regard,” Zardari said while speaking Thursday at the think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), the Nation newspaper reported on its site.
The “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” group was launched in September 2008 under the auspices of the UN, and has held a ministerial-level meeting in Tokyo in April. The group with some 12 member countries aims at giving financial aid to Pakistan.
He also said that his country wants to continue the dialogue with India and that long-term peace in South Asia was not possible without an amicable solution of the Kashmir issue.
“Our future generations will be secure after solving this issue,” he said.
Zardari said democracy had won in Pakistan and an example of this was that a former military dictator was today playing hide and seek in Britain.
He said the extremists and militants were created decades ago by a deliberate policy to employ religious fanaticism for achieving certain objectives and that the free world adopted a strategy based on the misinterpretation of religion to instigate Muslims around the world to wage jihad.
Zardari said the strategy might have worked well but the world abandoned Afghanistan in a hurry and no thought was given to its stability after the withdrawal of foreign forces.
