Pakistan hits back at India in UN after Indian FM speech
Shares
UNITED NATIONS: (APP) A top Pakistani diplomat Monday hit back after India leveled a series of allegations against Pakistan, including that Islamabad promotes terrorism, saying it was actually New Delhi that sponsors and perpetrates that menace and aggression against neighbouring countries.
READ MORE: India is beating the war drum : Maleeha Lodhi
"Over the course of the last half century, India has sponsored and perpetrated terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours; creating terrorist groups; destabilizing and blockading neighbors to do its strategic bidding and sponsoring subversion, sabotage and terrorism in various parts of Pakistan,"Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said while excercizing her right of reply to the tirade by Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the General Assembly earlier in the day.
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.
"Their call for freedom has been met with characteristic Indian brutality," Ambassador Lodhi said while referring to over a hundred innocent Kashmiris have been killed, hundreds blinded and thousands injured by Indian bullets and pellets, including infants, children, women and men.
READ MORE: Maleeha Lodhi lashes out at India over arrogance on Kashmir issue
"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 Indian atrocities and massive human rights violations in Kashmir.
"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, ambassador 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 recognized and promised to them by the UN Security Council and by India and Pakistan," the Pakistani envoy said.
"For 70 years, India has prevented the Kashmiris, through force and fraud, from exercising this right and holding the UN supervised Plebiscite to enable the Kashmiris to determine their political destiny.
READ MORE: World should stand behind Pakistan in its mission of eradicating Terrorism: Maleeha Lodhi
"The struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination is a legitimate struggle. And, they have the right to receive moral and political support from the international community."
The ambassador said, "The attack on the Indian Army base in Uri, particularly its timing, has all the hallmarks of an operation designed to divert attention from India's atrocities in occupied Jammu and 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 is utilizing the Uri incident to blame Pakistan for the current Kashmiri uprising and divert attention from its brutal occupation".
"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.
Ambassado Lodhi said India that has long been a sponsor an practitioner of state terrorism.
"The recently captured Indian spy, an intelligence officer, Kulbhushan Yadav, has confessed to India's support to such terrorist and subversive activities particularly in Balochistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas. 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 destabilize Balochistan, are now on record. This is blatant violation of the principles of the UN Charter."
Instead of aiming to destabilize 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.
The latest offer was made by the Prime Minister of Pakistan from the rostrum of this very Assembly," 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.
