India Pakistan spar over Kashmir at UNGA
New York: Sparring over Kashmir at the
UN General Assembly, India and Pakistan have again
exchanged verbal volleys over the issue with the Indian delegate dubbing the
remarks of his Pakistani counterpart as "unsolicited comments" that
were "factually incorrect".
According to a summary
on the UN website of a meeting in the General Assembly's Third Committee that
deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues, Pakistani delegate Diyar
Khan raised the issue of Kashmir by
saying that he regretted that the people of Jammu and Kashmir had
been "deprived of their right to self-determination."
Participating in the
session on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and right to
self-determination here yesterday, Khan said the right to self-determination
must be exercised in an environment free from coercion or duress, as electoral
processes held in situations of foreign occupation or alien domination did not
reflect people's true wishes.
He said
self-determination did not lapse with the passage of time and neither could it
be "set aside" by charges of terrorism.
Indian delegate Mayank
Joshi stressed that Pakistan's "unsolicited comments" pertaining to
Jammu and Kashmir were "factually incorrect", according to the
meeting's summary. He said free, fair and open elections were regularly
held in that territory at all levels.
Joshi said India was a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual
society, fully committed to the goal of eliminating all forms of
discrimination.
Exercising the Right of Reply, the Pakistani representative said that
the Indian delegation had "alleged" that Jammu and Kashmir was part
of India.
He refuted this assertion made by India saying that the UN Security
Council had adopted several resolutions declaring Jammu and Kashmir as a
"disputed territory".
Khan claimed that the elections in Jammu and Kashmir had been rejected
by the United Nations and the Kashmiri people.
Resolutions had clarified that no electoral exercise conducted by the
Indian authorities could be a substitute for a free plebiscite held by the
United Nations, he said.
Speaking in the exercise of the right of reply, the Indian
representative said the elections in Jammu and Kashmir had been held under the
scrutiny of international media which had not faulted those elections.
Taking the floor for a second time, the representative of Pakistan said
the elections held under foreign occupation could not be a substitute to
impartial elections.
Joshi noted that the references of Pakistani delegation were out of
context.
PTI
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