Pakistan, India spar over Kashmir at UN

UNITED NATIONS - Rejecting an Indian claim that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, Pakistan on Monday called for settling the long-standing dispute that bedevils the relations between the neighbouring countries.
Reacting to a statement by India’s representative AK Haiprasad at the UN, Pakistani delegate Suljuk Mustansar Tarar also deplored the Indian attempt to equate the legitimate struggles of peoples for the right to self-determination with terrorism. “Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory according to several UN Security Council resolutions on the subject and numerous undertakings and statements by the Indian leadership,” he told the UN General Assembly Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues.
“The Security Council’s demand for free and fair plebiscite under the UN auspices still remains to be implemented”, he said in the course of a verbal exchange with the Indian representative.
The exchange was triggered after Pakistan’s Acting Permanent representative Amjad Hussain Sial drew the attention of the international community to the Indian repression in occupied Kashmir and called for the resumption of composite dialogue to resolve the dispute.
“A peaceful resolution of this dispute is imperative for durable peace, stability and progress in South Asia,” Ambassador Sial said.
“We must seize the opportunity for a negotiated settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir issue with the full involvement of the Kashmiri people in accordance with their aspirations,” he said in a debate on the ‘Right of Peoples to Self-determination’.
Having gained independence through the exercise of the right to self-determination, Ambassador Sial said Pakistan had extended political, moral and diplomatic support to the exercise of that right by all other people who were entitled to that right.
The free exercise of that right, however, had been denied in some parts of the world, such as Jammu and Kashmir and Palestine, he pointed out.
On 27 October, the Pakistan representative added, the population in Indian-occupied Kashmir had been widely agitated by the anniversary of their predicament. Six decades had elapsed since the Kashmiri people were promised the exercise of the right to self-determination by the Security Council resolutions, which pronounced that the status of Jammu and Kashmir would be decided through a democratic plebiscite.