Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday said he had written a letter to United Nations Security Council President Joanna Wronecka asking for an emergency meeting of the council to discuss India’s “illegal” actions in Jammu and Kashmir, Dawn reported. On August 5, India had revoked the autonomy granted to the state under Article 370 of Constitution, and bifurcated it into Union Territories.
Qureshi also called his Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputowicz to discuss the request to convene the session. Poland is the chair of the UN Security Council for August. In response, Czaputowicz said the dispute between India and Pakistan could be resolved only through dialogue. He added that consultations about Pakistan’s request would be held soon.
Qureshi also called for the circulation of his letter among members of the Security Council. He said Pakistan believed that India’s unilateral actions not only threatened regional, but also world peace.
Pakistan’s move came a day after Poland said Kashmir was a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan, and asked the two countries to sort out their differences through talks. According to the Simla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration of 1999, Kashmir is a bilateral matter.
India has repeatedly described the developments in Jammu and Kashmir as its internal matter. On Monday, the country’s envoy to the United States said President Donald Trump’s offer of mediation in the dispute was no longer on the table. Last month, Trump told Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to mediate. New Delhi had denied the claimed immediately.
Pakistan has responded to India’s actions by downgrading diplomatic ties, ending trade relations, and halting transport services such as the Samjhauta and Thar Express train services between the two countries, and a bus service between New Delhi and Lahore.
On August 11, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan claimed that the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is affiliated, was similar to that of Nazis. “I am afraid this RSS ideology of Hindu Supremacy, like the Nazi Aryan supremacy, will not stop in IOK [Indian-occupied Kashmir]; instead it will lead to suppression of Muslims in India & eventually lead to targeting of Pakistan,” he tweeted. “The Hindu supremacists’ version of Hitler’s Lebensraum.”
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