Srinagar
India on Tuesday criticized Pakistan at the UN for repeatedly raising the Kashmir issue on platforms where it has not been part of the agenda, saying the neighbouring country has ventured to plough a “lonely furrow contrary to the onward march of history”.
India’s response came after Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, said that the decolonisation agenda of the UN will “remain incomplete” without resolution of the “long festering dispute” of Jammu and Kashmir.
The issue was raised by Pakistan during a debate on decolonisation in the fourth committee of the UN General Assembly.
Srinivas Prasad, minister at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN, said India “rejects the efforts of the delegation of Pakistan to bring issues which have never been on the agenda of this Committee ever in its history.”
He said India considered it a diversion from the agenda and as a distraction not worthy of a response.
“Even as all those who have taken the floor have focused on issues of Non Self-Governing Territories, a solitary member State, as usual, has ventured to plough a lonely furrow contrary to the onward march of history,” said the Indian diplomat.
However, exercising its right to reply, Pakistan said that Kashmir remained a “dispute under any definition”, and that there was an “explicit obligation” for the UN and the parties to work to resolve it.
Earlier, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN Dr Maleeha Lodhi condemned India for the “aggressive use of pellet guns” against peaceful protestors in Kashmir, calling the act as “first mass blinding in human history.”
While addressing the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee, Lodhi said that India is committing ‘war crimes’ which have left the young generation sightless and maimed for life, Geo News reported.
She said that the decolonisation agenda of the UN will remain unfulfilled without peaceful resolution of one of the longest disputes of all time.
“This represents the most persistent failure of the United Nations”, Lodhi stated. “Contrary to Indian claims, Jammu and Kashmir never was and never can be an integral part of India. It is disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council,” she said.
