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Pakistan's Imran Khan Vows to Raise Kashmir in All Global Forums

“India has played its last card, now it’s our turn,” he said. 

Pakistan's Imran Khan Vows to Raise Kashmir in All Global Forums
File photo: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. (Photographer: Asad Zaidi/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed to raise India’s move to end the autonomy of Kashmir at all international forums including the United Nations.

“India has played its last card, now it’s our turn,” he said in a televised speech on Monday. Khan said he will highlight the issue in his speech to the United Nations on Sept. 27 and with world leaders as Kashmir’s ambassador. “Not just the Kashmiris, but Muslims all over the world are looking at super powers for help,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise move this month to scrap seven decades of autonomy in India’s only Muslim-majority state has raised tensions with its neighbor, Pakistan, which also lays claim to the northern Himalayan territory. The region has seen deadly skirmishes across the so-called Line of Control - the de facto border in Kashmir - between the two armies since the decision as world leaders including President Donald Trump called upon both sides to show restraint.

Khan’s administration has suspended bilateral trade with India and it is seeking global mediation over Kashmir. India wants to keep the longstanding dispute at a bilateral level. Both nuclear-armed nations claim the area, which has triggered two of the three wars they fought since the British left the subcontinent in 1947.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kamran Haider in Islamabad at khaider2@bloomberg.net;Ismail Dilawar in Karachi at mdilawar@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Khalid Qayum, Abhay Singh

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.