Pakistan pushes back at India’s terrorism allegations at UN General Assembly

Iftikhar Ali

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 (APP):A Pakistani diplomat Friday hit back after an Indian delegate  branded Pakistan as being a sponsor and promoter

of terrorism, asserting that New Delhi has “elevated propaganda into statecraft.”

“It (India) exports terrorism and violence while trying to import victimhood and sympathy,” Saima Saleem, a counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the United Nations,  said while exercising her right of reply in the UN General Assembly.

Ms Saleem was reacting to a statement made by India’s delegate, Ms Petal Gahlot, in response to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s speech earlier in the day in which he made a reference to the 2025 military conflict with India, saying Pakistan’s “brave and valiant armed forces” repulsed the “aggression” with “precision and professionalism”.

In her response,  the Indian delegate accused  Pakistan of upholding security during the day, while actually carrying out terrorism at night.

Rebutting the Indian allegations about terrorism, Ms Saleem said that India was aiding and abetting terrorist groups targeting Pakistanis, including the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan),  BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army)and its Majeed Brigade. “Yet, despite its endless lectures to others on terrorism,  we are still waiting to hear India unequivocally condemn the terrorist attacks that kill innocent Pakistani civilians,”  the Pakistani diplomat said.

“Since the turn of the century, Pakistan has lost nearly 100,000 lives to terrorism; generations scarred, and billions of dollars drained from our economy.”

As for India, Ms Saleem said its terrorist exports have gone from regional to global, citing Indian involvement in acts of terrorism in Canada and the United States.

While responding to PM Shehbaz’s reference to the Kashmiris’ plight under India’s occupation and Pakistan’s support to their right to self-determination, the Indian delegate pointedly referred to the recent developments in Azad Kashmir.

Ms. Saleem took issue with her Indian counterpart, saying, “The contrast between Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir could not be more stark. In AJK, Kashmiris enjoy rights, participate in political life, and have the freedom to express their opinions; while the people of Indian Occupied Kashmir endure decades of occupation, repression and denial of their fundamental rights and freedoms, including the inalienable right to self-determination.”

She added, ” Rights exercised cannot be equated with rights denied.”

By holding in abeyance of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty,  the Pakistani diplomat said India has “stooped to a new low” of weaponizing water, a lifeline for the 240 million people of Pakistan.

India’s “false narratives and disinformation” could not hide the crushing defeat it suffered at Pakistan’s hands during Marka-e-Haq in May 2025, she said. “It is well recognized by the international community that India lost more than a military conflict; it lost its credibility.”

The ruling RSS-BJP dispensation in India, Ms. Saleem said,  has institutionalized Hindutva ideology in state policy and practice, and unleashed a reign of terror against minorities — Muslims,  Christians, Dalits and Sikhs

As regard the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani diplomat  that Jammu and Kashmir never was, neither is, nor will ever be an integral part of India. “It is an internationally recognized disputed territory, a huge part of which is under India’s forcible and illegal occupation for nearly eight decades against the wishes of the Kashmiri people, and in gross violation of international law and numerous resolutions of the Security Council.”