Author:
Publication: The Middle East Media Research Institute
Date: March 11, 2008
URL: http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD186508
In an interview on the Waqt television channel,
that was published by the mainstream Urdu daily Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, senior
Pakistani newspaper editor Majeed Nizami discussed Kashmir's importance to
Pakistan, called it "the jugular vein" of Pakistan, and added that
Pakistan should not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to take it from India.
Nizami is editor in chief of both Roznama
Nawa-i-Waqt and the English daily The Nation, as well as managing director
of the Waqt television channel. Nizami articulated his views in an interview
on Waqt, and the interview was reported by Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt.
The following is a summary of and excerpts
from the report of the interview. [1]
Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt quoted Nizami as saying:
"It is better to die fighting than to die from famine. Kashmir is our
biggest issue, and showing flexibility on this matter is tantamount to treason.
Anyone who shows flexibility on the issue, I will consider a traitor."
Nizami noted that Pakistan founder M. A. Jinnah
had described Kashmir as Pakistan's shah-e-rag ("jugular vein")
because all water comes to Pakistan from Kashmir.
According to the report, Nizami said that
U.S. think tanks are predicting that Pakistan will become another Somalia
by 2018-19, and that India too wants to dismantle Pakistan. He said, "In
fact, in 1947 itself [the year Pakistan was created out of India] India planted
the time bomb of Kashmir in our foundations."
He added that the U.N. resolutions about Kashmir
should not be forgotten, and that "no matter what the United States says
about it, we should wait no longer for Kashmir's independence.
"Nizami said that his Waqt TV was, like
the entire Nawa-i-Waqt group, the torchbearer of Nazaria-e-Pakistan (the ideology
of Pakistan) and stood for the Pakistan envisaged by M. A. Jinnah and Islamist
poet Allama Iqbal.
He said, "The establishment of an Islamic
welfare state in Pakistan is our objective, and to achieve this objective
we will use Waqt television, like the Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper."
-------------------
[1] Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt (Pakistan), March
8, 2008.
