Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri (

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Pakistani politician and writer who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan between November 2002 until November 2007. He is the Senior Advisor on Political and International Affairs and Chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Task Force on Kashmir and a member of the Core Committee of the Party. He is also the author of ' Neither a Hawk Nor a Dove'. He was born in

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...

. After getting educated at the Punjab University, Kasuri later studied law at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

and was subsequently admitted as a barrister at the

Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and W ...

. He also went on to study French at

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

. He started his political career with the Tehreek-e-Istaqlal (TI) led by Air-Marshal Muhammad Asghar Khan. The TI was then the main opposition party. He rose to be its Secretary-General. He was also elected as the Secretary-General of the main opposition alliance, the

Pakistan Democratic Alliance The Pakistan People's Party ( ur, , ; PPP) is a centre-left, social-democratic political party in Pakistan. It is currently the third largest party in the National Assembly and second largest in the Senate of Pakistan. The party was founded i ...

in 1993. He went to prison on several occasions when Bhutto and General Zia ul Haq were in power for his opposition to both. He was elected to the National Assembly in 1997 and 2002. He was elected as Chairman of the Standing Committee on Information and Media Development. He staunchly opposed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (‘Shariat Bill’) during the Prime Ministership of

Nawaz Sharif Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif (Urdu, Punjabi: ; born 25 December 1949) is a Pakistani businessman and politician who has served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan for three non-consecutive terms. He is the longest-serving prime minister of Pak ...

. He resigned from membership of the National Assembly as a mark of protest against the 15th Amendment, saying that if passed in its original form, it would negate Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s pluralistic and progressive vision of Pakistan. He left the foreign office to join the

Movement for the Restoration of Democracy The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) ( ur, اتحاد برائے بحالی جمہوریت), was a historically left-wing populism and massive socialist political alliance formed to oppose and end the military government of Preside ...

in 1981 and was subsequently arrested. He won a seat in Pakistan's National Assembly as member from NA-142 (Kasur-V) in

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...

and later in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

and served on the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Relations. He left PML after the 1999 coup d'état and joined the military-backed regime to become the

Minister of Foreign Affairs A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between co ...

in 2002 and remained until 2007. He joined the Pakistan Movement of Justice (PTI) in 2012 and unsuccessfully ran for

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...

Early life

Education and academics

Kasuri is an ethnic

Pashtun Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically re ...

, he completed his high school in

and St Patrick's High School, Karachi, and got accepted at the Government College University but later took a transfer to the Punjab University where he earned a BA with ''Honors'' in

international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...

, in 1961. Throughout his academic career he had a uniformly excellent record, which culminated earning first position in the B.A E (Hons) examination of the Punjab University in 1961.

Statesmanship

Foreign diplomacy

In 1990, he again joined the foreign ministry and guided

Pakistan Muslim League The Pakistan Muslim League ( ur, ; known as PML), is the name of several different Pakistani political parties that have dominated the right-wing platform in the country. The Muslim League (a different party) was the party of Pakistan’ ...

on foreign policies issues. In 1996, he presided over the party delegation and visited the People's Republic of China (PRC). This delegation was invited by the

Communist Party of China The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...

(CPC) and was received by the top leadership of the CPC. He has also attended the Inter-Parliamentary Union conferences held in Seoul and in Cairo in 1997 as a chairman of the Pakistan Parliamentary Delegations. In 1998, he publicly endorsed for Prime minister Navaz Sharif's decision for

atomic test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

s (See:

Chagai-I Chagai-I is the code name of five simultaneous underground nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan at 15:15 hrs PKT on 28 May 1998. The tests were performed at Ras Koh Hills in the Chagai District of Balochistan Province. Chagai-I was Pakistan' ...

and

Chagai-II Chagai-II is the codename assigned to the second atomic test conducted by Pakistan, carried out on 30 May 1998 in the Kharan Desert in Balochistan Province of Pakistan. ''Chagai-II'' took place two days after Pakistan's first successful test, ...

) and was appointed as Prime Minister's Special Envoy (PMSE) to present his country's point of view, while backing the rationale of country's nuclear response. He subsequently visited many countries to gather the support for country's nuclear testing program, including Russia, the United States, Canada, China, France, the United Kingdom, and other important countries in the world. On 23 January 2012, he openly admitted on his Twitter account, to handing over Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to the US when was a foreign minister of Pakistan under General Musharraf. General Musharraf admits in his book (In the Line of Fire, page 237) that his government captured and handed over 369 people to the US. He also writes that the Pakistani government received ‘millions of dollars’ as prize money from the CIA for capturing those people.

Political activism

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He briefly left the Foreign Office (FO) in 1981 and joined the

Independence Movement Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

to step into national politics. He was quickly elevated as the

Secretary-General Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...

of the ''Tehrik-e-Istiqlal'' (lit. Independence Movement). He was subsequently arrested on innumerable occasions during his long struggle for democracy. After the military government of

Zia-ul-Haq General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, ( Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial ...

went back on its promise to hold general elections in the country, leading political parties got together under the banner of the

Movement for Restoration of Democracy The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) ( ur, اتحاد برائے بحالی جمہوریت), was a historically left-wing populism and massive socialist political alliance formed to oppose and end the military government of Preside ...

(MRD) for the purpose of holding general elections, restoration of fundamental rights of the citizens, removal of restrictions placed on the free functioning of the press and the establishment of an independent judiciary. He was arrested on numerous occasions for taking part in a movement launched by the political parties in February 1981 for the achievement of the above objectives. In 1983, he departed from the country in opposition response to Zia's purge and started his academic career in France. He briefly return in 1988 after the mysterious death of

in a plane crash and joined the Foreign service office after being requested by his peers. He took first public participation in 1993 general elections on a

(PML) platform, and was a provisional vice-president of PML, and successfully defended his constituency, NA-106: Kasur (now NA-142) in the 1997 general elections. He was subsequently appointed as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Media Development (PSCIMD) and was also a senior member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Relations (PSCFR). In 1999, after the 1999 military coup d'état, Kasuri had a severe confrontation with

Javed Hashmi Makhdoom Muhammad Javed Hashmi ( ur, مخدوم محمد جاوید ہاشمی; born 1 January 1948), is a Pakistani politician, political realist, and a senior conservative thinker on the platform of Pakistan Muslim League (N). After serving ...

who was presiding the PML in absence of Sharif, and defected to the dissident group headed by Shuja'at Hussain in 2001. He successfully contested in 2002 general elections from a NA-142: Kasur. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was one of the few members of the Pakistan Muslim League who always expressed his views on all the national issues frankly and fearlessly regardless of whether the government of the day liked his views or not. In 1997, he publicly called for the issue of the impeachment of the former President Farook Ahmad Leghari, and raised objections on the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment; he expressed very strongly and issued statements on the constitutional changes. He lobbied against the Fifteen Amendment, particularly as originally presented, was strongly objected to by him. It was primarily due to his efforts and his colleagues' lobbying that Sharif's government had to make an amendment in the Fifteenth Amendment, which contained provisions, which were highly detrimental to the federal and democratic structure of the

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

. Kasuri put immense effort to stop the bill from becoming into the law in its original shape that he threatened Prime Minister Sharif to resign from the party and his constituency unless the bill was amended, and notably resigned from the party, though resignation was torn up by Sharif in a stormy meeting of the Parliamentary party.

Foreign minister

On 23 November 2004, Prime Minister

Zafarullah Khan Jamali Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali (; 1 January 1940 – 2 December 2020) was a Pakistani politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Pakistan from 2002 until his resignation in 2004. He was the first and only elected prime minister from Balochi ...

nominated Kasuri to be country's

. His nomination was not objected by the opposition parties, and secured the unanimous votes for his nomination in the parliament. On 9:30 am PST, 23 November 2004, he took charge of the foreign ministry and announced that the new government's first priority is to normalize relations with India. He directed Pakistan's foreign policy more on neutral ground base and quoted: "We want to improve relations with India and wish peace and prosperity for the people of India."

2008 election

In the February 2008 parliamentary election, Kasuri ran for a National Assembly seat from NA-140 (Kasur-III), where he was defeated by the PPP candidate, Sardar Asif Ahmed Ali.

Academia and professorship

In 2012, he lectured on the topics involving in the Peace and conflict studies at the "Centre of Peace and Progress" where he lectured with

Jaswant Singh Major Jaswant Singh (; 3 January 193827 September 2020) was an officer of the Indian Army and an Indian Cabinet Minister. He was one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and was one of India's longest serving parliamen ...

and met with

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

N.K. Narayan. Khurshid Kasuri is the executive member of the board of directors of the Beaconhouse National University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kasuri, Khurshid Mahmud 1941 births Living people People from Kasur District Pakistan Muslim League (Q) politicians Pakistani lawyers Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf politicians Punjabi people Foreign Ministers of Pakistan Government College University, Lahore alumni University of Paris alumni University of the Punjab alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of the University of Cambridge Government of Shaukat Aziz Beaconhouse National University faculty Russian–Urdu translators