Kashmir Situation Is Of ‘Profound Concern’ To UK: PM Johnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday said in Parliament that the UK’s long-standing stance of Kashmir being a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan remains unchanged although the situation in the Valley is of “profound” concern to the country.

Johnson’s statement came in the backdrop of the two-day trip of 23 members of the European Parliament to Jammu and Kashmir to assess the situation.

The visiting EU parliamentarians on Wednesday termed the dilution of Article 370 an internal issue of India and said they stand by the country in its fight against terrorism.

Prime Minister Johnson — addressing a question from Conservative Party MP Steve Baker during the last Prime Minister’s Questions session before Parliament is dissolved this week ahead of the December 12 general elections — also made a reference to Britain’s colonial history in the region which made it more important for it not to intervene by prescribing any solutions.

“The welfare of communities in Kashmir is of profound concern to the UK government,” he told MPs in the House of Commons.

“It is the long-standing position of the UK government that the crisis in Kashmir is fundamentally a matter for India and Pakistan to resolve. And it is not alas, since we were there at the very beginning it is not for us as the UK to prescribe a solution in that dispute,” Johnson said.

Baker, MP for Wycombe in south-east England with a large Kashmiri-origin population, has been among the vocal British MPs since the Indian government’s revocation of the Article 370 provisions withdrawing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.