Bilawal for OIC body to ensure finance & trade equality.

ISLAMABAD -- Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Thursday proposed to establish a special task force of experts at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) forum to develop a strategy to secure equal treatment in the rules and structure of international finance, trade and taxation.

"We must also demand a speedy debt restructuring for 60 financially vulnerable countries, the redistribution of unutilized SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to developing countries, large lending by multilateral development banks, massive public-private partnership investments, sustainable infrastructure and the mobilization of the promised climate financing of US$100 billion," he said while delivering his opening statement as Chairman of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) at the two-day 49th Session of the CFM in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

He said Pakistan had been hit hard by the devastating floods last summer after facing the negative impacts of COVID, inflation, economic collapse in Afghanistan, and consequences of the Ukraine war.

He thanked the brotherly Islamic countries for their generous support for Pakistan in the hour of need.

As regards the Palestine issue, the foreign minister said the OIC member states must continue to condemn Israel's repeated aggression against the Al Aqsa Mosque and in the occupied Palestinian territory. The people of Palestine must have their own state within the 1967 borders with Al Quds Alsharif as its capital. "This may seem a daunting task today, yet I am convinced that the arc of history in the hand of Almighty tends towards justice."

Regarding the Kashmir issue, FM Bilawal said the United Nations Security Council had adopted a resolution that the people of Jammu and Kashmir must be able to exercise the right of self-determination through a UN-sponsored plebiscite. However, India moved away from its commitment to implement the decision, and resorted to fraud and force.

Three years after India's unilateral and illegal measures of August 5, 2019, he said, it was evident that its campaign of colonial expansion had failed. It would never succeed and the people of Kashmir would win in their struggle for freedom and self-determination, the foreign minister added.

He said Kashmir and Pakistan were bound by geography, faith, history and culture, and Pakistan would continue to extend its full political, diplomatic and moral support for the...