UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 (APP): Pakistan Monday brushed aside India’s claim of Jammu and Kashmir being its ‘integral part”, saying the disputed
status of the Himalayan state is acknowledged by the UN and the international community.
“Every official UN map depicts Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory,” Pakistani delegate Gul Qaiser Sarvani told the UN Security Council as its high-level discussion on UN peacekeeping operations came to a end.
Sarwani, who is a counselor at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, was reacting to Indian Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish’s claim that ” Kashmir has been, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.”
The Indian ambassador made that claim in response to the Special Assistant to Pakistan’s Prime Minister/Minister of State, Syed Tariq Fatemi, who made an earnest call on the 15-member Council to implement its own resolutions promising the Kashmiri people the right to self-determination through a UN-supervised plebiscite.
Exercising his right of reply, the Pakistani delegate said, “No amount of obfuscation can change the legal, political and historical reality — Jammu and Kashmir is not, and has never been a so-called ‘integral’ part of India.
“It is a disputed territory, whose ‘final disposition’ is to be decided by the people of Jammu and Kashmir through a UN supervised plebiscite, as demanded by numerous resolutions of the Security Council,” Sarwani added.
Pointing out that India holds Kashmir by brute force with over 900,000 troops and paramilitary forces, he said that India has killed over 100,000 innocent Kashmiris since 1989.
“It (India) has imposed the densest occupation in history, with one Indian soldier for every eight Kashmiri men, women and children,” the Pakistani delegate said, adding that the UN has duly recorded India’s gross violations of human rights in occupied territory.
As regard the Indian envoy’s allegation of cross-border terrorism, Sarwani said, “It is most ironic that India, which is committing the worst form of state terrorism in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, is portraying itself as the victim,” adding, that this was a familiar ploy of all occupiers and colonizers to paint legitimate struggles for freedom and liberation as terrorism.
Instead of maligning others for terrorism, he added, India should sincerely reflect on its own campaign of orchestrating targeted assassinations, subversion and terrorism in foreign countries.
“It is India which supports and finances terrorism against Pakistan through Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Majeed Brigade.”
APP/ift