page_title: Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
section_title: Political activism
hierarchical_section_title: Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri / Statesmanship / Political activism
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: 40. Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz 2004: Mian Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, Minister für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Islamische Republik Pakistan. English: 40th Munich Security Conference 2004: Mian Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
context_page_description: Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, is a 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, Punjab, British India to the wealthy Kasuri Pathan family of the Kheshgis. He educated at the Punjab University, Kasuri later studied law at Cambridge and was subsequently admitted as a barrister at the Gray's Inn. He also went on to study french at Nice. He started his political career with the Tehreek-e-Istaqlal 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 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.
context_section_description: He briefly left the Foreign Office (FO) in 1981 and joined the Independence Movement to step in the national politics. He was quickly elevated as the Secretary-General of the Tehrik-e-Istiqlal (lit. Independence Movement). He was subsequently arrested on innumerable occasions during his long struggle for the democracy. After the military government of Zia-ul-Haq 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 (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 Zia-ul-Haq in a plan crash and joined the Foreign service office after being request by his peers. He took first public participation in 1993 general elections on a Pakistan Muslim League (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 have had severe confrontation with Javed Hashmi 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 the 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. Kasuri put immense effort to stop the bill 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.
caption: Kasuri speaking at the 40th Munich Security Conference.
exif: {}