Pakistan rejects Indian claim to Kashmir as India’s integral part

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan on Tuesday rejected Indian claims that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, saying that it is a disputed territory pending a final settlement of the decades-old dispute between the two South Asian countries.

“Jammu and Kashmir never was and never will be a part of India,” Saad Warraich, a counsellor at Pakistan’s mission to the UN told the General Assembly, which concluded its debate on the responsibility to protect civilians, its first in nine years.

Exercising right of reply to Indian diplomat Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu’s claim of Kashmir being India’s integral part before the assembly recessed for the weekend, Warraich said that several UN Security Council resolutions expressly recognised the status of Jammu and Kashmir and that their legal standing was “firm and abiding”.

The Indian diplomat had reacted to Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi’s statement during the assembly debate in which she referred to the deteriorating situation in Indian occupied Kashmir, including the ongoing killings and mass blinding of innocent civilians.

Bayyapu accused the Pakistani envoy of misusing the UN platform to make “an unwarranted reference” to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

On Monday, Warraich, the Pakistani diplomat, rebutted the Indian charges and said that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had identified many systematic violations in the Indian occupied Kashmir. “As the report notes, the situation is exacerbated by parallel judicial structures built with the express objective to impede accountability and jeopardise the right of remedy for the victims of human rights violations.”

“Repeating groundless accusations and fabrications do not lend them credibility,” Warraich said. “They may, at best, satisfy a self-delusional notion of reality, but a farce can only go, thus far.”

In his second right of reply, the Indian diplomat again repeated his allegations against Pakistan.

The Pakistani diplomat replied, “No amount of obfuscation by India can alter the incontrovertible reality of the grim human rights situation in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir or the illegality of its occupation.”