Islamabad, September 27
Ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif has said his government wants strong relations with India and that all issues, including "flash point" Kashmir have to be settled through dialogue.

He said both countries had been spending heavily on defence that should have ordinarily been spent on social sectors. "I feel very proud that I'm the one who brought the two countries closer together. The Indian Prime Minister (AB Vajpayee) embarked on a visit to Pakistan (in 1999), on his first-ever state visit. We are now picking up the threads from where we left in 1999," Sharif said in an interview to the Wall Street Journal.

Later, addressing the UN General Assembly, Sharif raked up the Kashmir issue. He made a strong pitch for UN intervention to resolve "festering disputes". He said the UN must remain "attentive" to the protracted issue as also the "full realisation" of the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people.

Sharif said the UN "must continue to remain attentive to the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and the full realisation of the right to self-determination of its people. The suffering of the people cannot be brushed under the carpet, because of power politics." "As in the past, Pakistan calls upon the international community to give an opportunity to the Kashmiris to decide their future peacefully, in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions." — PTI

United Nations, September 27
India pushed its argument for a nuclear weapon-free and non-violent world and said it was prepared to negotiate a global no-first-use treaty. Its proposal for a convention banning the use of nuclear weapons remained on the UN table, it said.

Addressing the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Disarmament, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said India, as a responsible nuclear power, had a credible minimum deterrence policy and a posture of no-first use. “We refuse to participate in an arms race, including a nuclear arms race,” he added.

“We are prepared to negotiate a global no-first-use treaty and our proposal for a Convention banning the use of nuclear weapons remains on the table,” he said. Referring to Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, Khurshid said: "More than six decades later, it remains our collective challenge to craft a nuclear weapon-free and non-violent world order."

"India remains convinced that its security would be strengthened in a nuclear weapon-free and non-violent world order. This conviction is based both on principle as well as pragmatism. We believe that the goal of nuclear disarmament can be achieved through a step-by-step process underwritten by a universal commitment and an agreed multilateral framework that is global and non-discriminatory," he said.

He said there was “need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons”. — IANS

The US and Iran held their first official high-level talks since the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Thursday in New York, raising the prospect of a breakthrough in a years-long stalemate over Iran's nuclear programme.

US Secretary of State John F Kerry met Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at a multilateral meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session. The two followed this up with a brief bilateral meeting. Both Kerry and Zarif described the meeting as "constructive".

Officials from the so-called P5+1 group-China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany-were also present at the talks, which were chaired by the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged a positive change in Iran's tone. The "tone and spirit" of the meeting has been a "big improvement on the tone and spirit of previous meetings on this issue," said Hague.

Kerry, however, sounded a note of caution. "Needless to say, one meeting and a change in tone, which was welcome, doesn't answer those questions yet, and there's a lot of work to be done," he said.

The US has led a Western effort, which included sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy, to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Zarif called the sanctions counter-productive and reiterated Iran's insistence that its nuclear programme was intended for peaceful purposes.

The P5+1 want Iran to halt production and stockpiling of enriched uranium and has demanded it should shut down the Fordow underground enrichment facility. In return, they have offered to ease the sanctions.

Kerry was hopeful about a breakthrough in future talks.

"We hope very, very much - all of us - that we can get concrete results that will answer the outstanding questions regarding the programme," Kerry said after his meeting with Zarif.

"But I think all of us were pleased that the Foreign Minister came today, that he did put some possibilities on the table. Now it's up to the people to do the hard work of trying to fill out what those possibilities could do."

Zarif said Iran hoped to be able to make progress towards resolving the nuclear issue "in a timely fashion based on respecting the rights of the Iranian people to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enrichment, at the same time making sure that there is no concern on the international level that Iran's nuclear programme is anything but peaceful."

The Kerry-Zarif meeting took place hours after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called for the destruction of all nuclear weapons and for Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without delay.

Rouhani was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator with the European Union in 2005.

"No nation should possess nuclear weapons, since there are no right hands for these wrong weapons," Rouhani said at a nuclear disarmament conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.