KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Representatives of Pakistan and India traded charges at the United Nations after Indian External affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj levelled a series of allegations.
Her fiery speech in the General Assembly wherein she declared Islamabad responsible for cross-border terrorism invoked a tough Pakistani response.
“Over the course of the last half century, India has sponsored and perpetrated terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours; creating terrorist groups; destabilising and blockading neighbours to do its strategic bidding and sponsoring subversion, sabotage and terrorism in various parts of Pakistan,” Pakistani Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said while exercising her right of reply to the Indian speech.
Ambassador Lodhi said Ms Swaraj’s statement was a “litany of falsehoods about Pakistan and a travesty of facts and history”.
“We reject all the baseless allegations made in that statement,” the Pakistani envoy said in a hard hitting reply.
“These allegations are designed principally to deflect global attention from the brutalities being perpetrated by India’s over half a million occupation force against innocent and unarmed Kashmiri children, women and men in the Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” she said.
In her speech, the Indian minister urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who focused on Kashmir in his speech to the UNGA last week, to look at what is happening in Balochistan.
Calling for global isolation of Pakistan, Swaraj said that “countries that nurture, peddle and export terror should have no place in the comity of nations”.
“In our midst, there are nations that still speak the language of terrorism, that nurture it, peddle it, and export it. To shelter terrorists has become their calling card. We must identify these nations and hold them to account,” Swaraj asserted in her nearly 20-minute speech.
“These nations, in which UN designated terrorists roam freely, lead processions and deliver their poisonous sermons of hate with impunity, are as culpable as the very terrorists they harbour. Such countries should have no place in the comity of nations,” Swaraj said.
“The terror apparatus that was behind 26/11 and Uri was also behind a number of terror attacks all over the world,” she said.
In a rebuttal of what she called “baseless allegations” made by Sharif from the podium of the General Assembly about human rights violations by India in Kashmir, Swaraj said, “I can only say that those accusing others of human rights violations would do well to introspect and see what egregious abuses they are perpetrating in their own country, including in Balochistan. The brutality against the Baloch people represents the worst form of state oppression.”
Sushma also said that Jammu and Kashmir is an “integral part of India and nobody can wrest it away by force”.
In his hard-hitting response, Ambassador Lodhi said that “Kashmiri peoples call for freedom has been met with characteristic Indian brutality”.
Over a hundred innocent Kashmiris have been killed, hundreds blinded and thousands injured by Indian bullets and pellets, including infants, children, women and men, she said.
“This is the worst form of state terrorism, a war crime, that India has continued to perpetrate in the situation of foreign occupation in Jammu and Kashmir for the past many decades,” she told the 193-member Assembly.
Pakistan, she said, demanded a full and impartial investigation of these atrocities and massive human rights violations. “We ask that India accept the investigation proposed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and allow them access for the purpose.”
Jammu and Kashmir, Lodhi said, never was and can never be an integral part of India. “It is a disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council.”
“The right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination has been recognised and promised to them by the UNSC and by India and Pakistan,” the Pakistani envoy said.
The ambassador said the Uri attack, particularly its timing, had all the hallmarks of an operation designed to divert attention from India’s atrocities in Kashmir. The international community is well aware that “several such incidents have been staged in the past to serve India’s tactical and propaganda objectives”.
“India’s government is delusional if it believes that it can ‘isolate’ any country. It is India itself, which because of its war crimes in Kashmir and elsewhere, and because of its warmongering, is likely to be isolated in the international community,” she said.
Ambassador Lodhi said India has “long been a sponsor and practitioner of state terrorism” and she referred to the captured Indian spy, Kulbhushan Yadav, in this regard. “Indeed, it was Kulbhushan, who was financing, arming and supporting individuals and entities listed under the UN sanctions regime,” she said.
“India’s policy of interference in Pakistan, especially its attempt to destabilise Balochistan, are now on record. This is blatant violation of the principles of the UN Charter.”
Instead of aiming to destabilise Pakistan, she said the Indian government would do well to address India’s own vast internal problems and the dozen or so insurgencies going on in its own country.
“For the Indian External Affairs minister to claim that her country has imposed no preconditions for talks with Pakistan is another falsehood. India suspended talks more than a year ago, and has refused to resume them despite repeated offers from Pakistan and advice from the international community,” she said.
“But let us be clear, talks are no favour to Pakistan. They are in the interest of both India and Pakistan and the people of our two countries… Let me reiterate that Pakistan is ready and willing for serious and result oriented talks with India, especially to resolve the longstanding core dispute of Jammu and Kashmir, which is imperative for durable peace, stability and development in the region,” she added.
