KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Speaking in a debate on the “Right of peoples to self-determination”, the Pakistani envoy said despite the fact the UN Security Council’s resolutions on Kashmir were supported by Pakistan, India and the international community, they still await implementation.
While regretting that the decades-old UN Security Council resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir remain unimplemented, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, stressed the need for a peaceful settlement of the dispute between India and Pakistan over the Himalayan state.
“Fulfillment of the long-held promise of self-determination to the Kashmiri people is urgent as well as indispensable to establishing lasting peace and stability in South Asia,” she said.
“The right to self-determination must be exercised freely; it did not lapse with the passage of time and the legitimate struggle for this right could not be cast aside by deliberately conflating it with terrorism.”
It is a travesty of law and morality that decades after these resolutions were adopted, the people of Jammu and Kashmir continue to be deprived of their fundamental right, she said, adding, “Generation after generation of Kashmiris have seen only broken pledges and ruthless oppression.”
In her speech, Lodhi recalled Pak PM Nawaz Sharif’s forthright address to UN General Assembly in September in support of the Kashmir cause and his call for the peaceful resolution of the dispute in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. PM Sharif had also stated that the Kashmiri people were an integral part of the dispute and consultations with them were essential.
She said the continued suffering of Kashmiri women, children and men should shake the collective conscience of the international community. “The 70th Anniversary of the United Nations ought to be a catalyst to spur this body into action, and not just more words.”
