UNITED NATIONS – Pakistan has rejected Indian claims that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India, saying it is a disputed territory pending a final settlement of the decades-old dispute between the two South Asian countries.
“Jammu and Kashmir never were – and never will be, part of India,” Saad Warraich, a Counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the UN at the General Assembly which concluded its debate on the responsibility to protect civilians.
Exercising his right of reply to Indian diplomat Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu’s claim of Kashmir being India’s integral part, Warraich said that several UN Security Council resolutions expressly recognized 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.
“Repeating groundless accusations and fabrications do not lend them credibility,” Warraich highlighted and added that 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
but the Pakistani diplomat replied that 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.
