ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan Monday said he was not worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the person worthy of the prize would be the one who solves the Kashmir dispute according to the aspirations of the Kashmiri people and paves the way for peace and human development in the subcontinent.
“I am not worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. The person worthy of this would be the one who solves the Kashmir dispute according to the wishes of the Kashmiri people and paves the way for peace and human development in the subcontinent”, he said in a tweet.
The prime minister’s tweet came in response to thousands of people through signed online petitions calling for Imran Khan to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize after he freed an Indian pilot in a bid to defuse tensions with his country’s arch-rival neighbour.
The hashtag #NobelPeaceForImranKhan began trending on Twitter on Thursday after Prime Minister Khan announced that the captured pilot would be released as a ‘peace gesture’. Abhinandan, whose MiG fighter was shot down by Pakistan, returned to India on Friday.
Two similarly worded campaigns on the change.org platform launched by users in the UK and Pakistan called for Imran Khan to be nominated for next year’s prize ‘for his peace efforts and dialogues in the Asian region on diverse conflicts’. They gained more than 240,000 and 60,000 digital signatures respectively.
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry Saturday also submitted a resolution in the National Assembly demanding Imran Khan be given the award for his contribution to peace in the region. The resolution submitted by Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry stated that Imran Khan played a sagacious role in reducing recent tension between Pakistan and India. “Warmongering by Indian leadership had brought the two nuclear weapon states on the brink of war,” it said, adding that the aggressive attitude of Indian leadership endangered the lives of tens of millions of people on both sides of the border. The resolution said that the situation was averted due to proactive and deft handling of the situation by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Prime Minister Imran’s gesture was also hailed by world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, British PM Theresa May, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
