Pakistan has rejected India’s claim that Jammu and Kashmir was its “integral part” of India, and sought a UN-led plebiscite to determine the will of the Kashmiri people, as demanded by UN Security Council resolutions. “Jammu and Kashmir is not, never has been, and will never be an ‘integral’ part of India,” Pakistani delegate Ansar Shah told the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee on Tuesday. “This disputed status of Kashmir is acknowledged by the UN and the international community,” Shah, a first secretary at the Pakistani Mission to the UN, said in a response to a an accusation by an Indian delegate that Pakistan was misinterpreting the principle of self-determination which, he said, does not justify undermining a member state’s territorial integrity.  The Indian delegate, Eldos Mathew Punnoose, a counsellor at India’s Mission to the UN, was reacting to a sharp statement by Pakistan UN Ambassador Munir Akram who described the Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir as the “worst manifestation of modern-day colonialism,” and called on the U.N. to push for a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UNSC resolutions and Kashmiri people’s wishes.

“India is under a legally binding obligation under Article 25 of the UN Charter to implement the resolutions of the Security Council and enable the people of Jammu and Kashmir to exercise their right to self-determination,” the Pakistani delegate said, pointing out that Kashmir ie being held by brute force, with all pro-freedom Hurriyat Leaders remaining incarcerated and many having died in custody under suspicious circumstances. Far from seeking a peaceful solution to the dispute, Ansar Shah pointed out that India has resorted to belligerence against Pakistan – threatening to “take over” liberated Azad Jammu and Kashmir, reminding New Delhi that Islamabad will respond decisively to any Indian aggression. The Pakistan delegate went on to call India the “mother” of terrorism in South Asia, having resorted to terrorism against all its neighbours as a tool of its hegemonic policies. “India’s campaign of targeted terrorist assassinations in third countries is now common knowledge,” he said, adding, its agents have been responsible for at least 22 targeted assassinations in Pakistan.

“The Indian terrorist franchise has now gone global – with at least one assassination carried out in Canada and second attempted in the United States,” Shah said. In this regard, the Pakistani delegate referred to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s threat that his “New India comes in your home to kill you!”, saying , “Just yesterday, Canada expelled India’s top diplomats as ‘persons of interest’ in such criminal activities. “We submit: this New India is a dangerous entity. Unless Hindutva fascism is opposed; unless India’s sense of impunity is ended; unless India’s Muslims, Christians and other minorities are protected from genocide; unless the Kashmiri people are freed from the yoke of Indian colonialism, the threat of wider violence and conflict spread by this state- sponsor of terrorism will remain a clear and present danger,” the Pakistani delegate added.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan