Pakistan PM Sharif wants to have talks with Modi: 'Pakistan learnt lessons from three wars with India'

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan which is currently facing threatening economic challenges, on Tuesday (17) called for sincere talks with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on "burning issues including Kashmir".

He also said that his country learnt its lessons after fighting three wars with India that led to miserable consequences in terms of unemployment and poverty. He said Pakistan wanted to live in peace with India given they resolved their problems.

Speaking to UAE-based Al-Arabiya news channel, Sharif, said, “India is a very brotherly country, and we have always shared brotherly relations and it is unique. Pakistan has learnt its lessons, we had three wars with India and the consequence of those wars were more misery, unemployment, and poverty. We want to live in peace with India provided we are able to resolve our problems. ”

s“It is up to us to live peacefully and make progress or quarrel with each other, and waste time and resources. We want to alleviate poverty, achieve prosperity, and provide education and health facilities and employment to our people and not waste our resources on bombs and ammunition, that is the message I want to give to PM Modi,” Sharif added.

India and Pakistan fought three wars in 1947, 1965, and 1971 and clashed over a limited conflict in Kargil in 1999.

Suggesting that the leadership of the UAE could play a key role in bringing the two South Asian neighbours to the table, the Pakistani prime minister said, “My message to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is — Let’s sit, talk and bring to the table all our issues and find a resolution for burning issues like Kashmir.”

On the topic of Article 370 which the Indian government scrapped in 2019, Shehbaz reiterated Pakistan’s allegations about minorities being ‘persecuted’ in India.

He added, “We are ready for talks and peace.”

“We are both are nuclear powers, if anything happens, who will live to tell what happened,” he said.

Sharif's elder brother Nawaz Sharif, who had been the prime minister of Pakistan three times, had been part of negotiations with the Indian leadership in the past, including late Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Modi had also paid a surprise visit to his residence in Lahore in 2015 end before a terror attack struck an Indian air base in Pathankot in the northern Indian state of Punjab.