India on Tuesday rejected Pakistan’s remark at the United Nations that the Kashmir conflict was one the “most glaring and long-standing” disputes, saying that Islamabad should focus on the “unfinished” task of tackling terrorism, PTI reported.
Vidisha Maitra, first secretary of India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, made the statement exercising her right to reply to counter the reference to Kashmir. “We reject the malicious reference made to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral part of India,” she said. “If there is an item that is unfinished on the agenda of the UN, it is that of tackling the scourge of terrorism.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had on Monday brought up the Kashmir dispute during his address on the 75th anniversary of the UN. “The organisation is only as good as its member states wish it to be,” he said in a video message, according to Hindustan Times. “The Jammu & Kashmir [J&K] and Palestine disputes are the organisation’s most glaring and long-standing disputes. The people of occupied J&K still await fulfilment of the commitment made to them by the UN to grant them their right to self-determination”.
Maitra replied that she had hoped during the UN’s anniversary event that the General Assembly would be “spared another repetition of the baseless falsehoods that have now become a trademark of Pakistan’s interventions on such platforms”.
“However, for a nation that is bereft of milestones, one can only expect a stonewalled and stymied approach to reason, diplomacy and dialogue,” she added. Maitra also called Pakistan’s remarks a “never-ending fabricated narrative” by the country on India’s internal politics.
The first secretary also called out Pakistan for harbouring and training terrorists. “Pakistan is a country which is globally recognised as the epicentre of terrorism, which by its own admission harbours and trains terrorists, and hails them as martyrs and consistently persecutes its ethnic and religious minorities,” she said.
Her remarks were in reference to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan calling former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden a “martyr”.
“For Pakistanis across the globe, it was an embarrassing moment when the Americans came and killed Osama bin Laden at Abottabad... martyred him,” Khan had said in the country’s Parliament in June, according to The Hindu. “The whole world started abusing us after that. Our ally came inside our country and killed someone without informing us. And, 70,000 Pakistanis died because of US’ war on terror.”
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