The Rumi Forum presented “The Role of the United States in Resolving the Kashmir Issue” with Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Executive Director, Kashmiri American Council.
The world community has been deeply moved by recent reports of almost the entire adult population of major towns in Kashmir coming out in the streets and staging demonstrations for exercising their right of self-determination. We take this massive but entirely non-violent and peaceful upsurge as an unmistakable indication of the suffering caused by the international community’s failure to resolve the dispute concerning the status of what was formerly the State of Jammu and Kashmir and is now partly Indian-administered and partly Pakistan-controlled territory. Considering the fact that , as early as 1948, the Security Council adopted a resolution recommending a plebiscite as the means of settling the dispute, the failure becomes ironical. The endless arguments and counter-arguments of the two sides in the Security Council and the consequent impasse notwithstanding, the fact remains that the proposed plebiscite was never held and the people now demonstrating are asking to be allowed the exercise of the right unequivocally pledged to them. Our optimism has been sharpened by the statements that President Obama have made during his election campaign to settle the issue of Kashmir. There is an urgency to settle the Kashmir dispute to bring peace and prosperity to the region of South Asia – home to one-fifth of total human race.
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is the Executive Director of the Washington based Kashmiri American Council / Kashmir Center. He believes in the peaceful settlement of the Kashmir conflict through tripartite negotiations between Governments of India and Pakistan and the accredited leadership of the people of he State of Jammu & Kashmir. Dr. Fai is the founding chairman of the World Peace Forum. He is the Chairman of the International Institute of Kashmir Studies. He is also the Chairman of the Kashmiri American Foundation & the London-based Justice Foundation. Dr. Fai is also the Member of the Board of Director of Istanbul-based the Union of the NGOs of the Islamic World. Dr. Fai has been a leading spokesman for the Kashmir cause for over three decades and has traveled to over forty countries lecturing on the subject. His articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago tribune, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Plain Dealer, Baltimore Sun and many other foreign policy journals in the United States and around the world.
Moderator:
Mr. Tariq Shafi, CPA, has over twenty-five years of accounting and tax experience in the Washington metro area and London, England. He was a tax and accounting manager for six years at a prestigious firm in Old Town Alexandria before venturing out on his own in 1995. Since then, his practice has grown steadily as word has spread about his firm’s high reputation for quality service at a reasonable cost. Mr. Shafi and his staff believe strongly that building ties with the community involve giving their time and effort to worthwhile causes and they are active participants in local charitable and educational institutions.