*UNITED NATIONS: A senior Pakistani diplomat told a top United Nationofficial that India’s “false and malevolent” claims of having destroyed theso-called camps across the Line of Control (LoC) in Azad Kashmir wereproved to be lies when Pakistan took Islamabad-based foreign diplomats tothe site in question on Monday.*
“This is patent falsehood,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said of the Indianclaims at a meeting with the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs,Rosemary DiCarlo, during which the UN official was also updated on thegrave situation in Indian occupied Kashmir that poses a threat to regionalpeace and security, according to official sources.
The Pakistani envoy, according to the sources, said that the Indian HighCommission in Islamabad was also formally invited to join the trip, butthey did not take up the offer, sensing that their claims would be exposed.
Briefing Ms. DiCarlo, Ambassador Lodhi said that India’s illegal annexationof the state of occupied Kashmir on Aug. 5 had triggered multiple crises inthe region and urged the UN to play its part for a peaceful settlement ofthe decades-old Kashmir dispute.
Ambassador Lodhi cited media reports of widespread torture and arbitraryarrests; of thousands being picked up from their homes in the dead of thenight, without any trace, as well as the abduction of over 13,000Kashmiris, including children.
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She told the UN official that the situation on the ground was brewing intoa full-fledged humanitarian crisis, the true extent of which will only beknown once the “draconian” restrictions were lifted.
Ambassador Lodhi dismissed India’s claims of normalcy having returned tooccupied Kashmir, as “yet another Indian fallacy”, saying it has beendebunked by the international media and human rights organizations.
