ISLAMABAD – A high level Pakistani delegation has arrived in US for talksover India’s violations of Indus Waters Treaty
A four-member Pakistan delegation, headed by Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf,arrived in Washington to hold talks with World Bank authorities overIndia’s repeated violations of Indus Waters Treaty.
The delegation will apprise the World Bank chief of Pakistan’s reservationsover the issue and request the global financial institution to play itsrole as a guarantor.
Pakistan officials will hold discussions with the World Bank authoritiesover Kishenganga and Ratle and other 12 projects undertaken by New Delhi.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Aizaz Chaudhryremarked that Pakistan intends to *consult* with the World Bank over theKishenganga Dam issue. He was addressing a seminar titled “Pakistan andUnites States A Lasting Partnership” on Saturday.
Speaking with regard to issues pertaining to Islamabad’s eastern neighbour,Chaudhry said the country intends to take up plans of Indus Waters Treaty(alternatively known as the Sindh Taas Agreement), Kishanganga Dam, andRatle hydroelectric plant with Jim Yong Kim, the president of the globalfinancial institution.
The statement came in response to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiinaugurating Kishenganga Dam project on Saturday amid protests fromIslamabad, which says the project on a river flowing into Pakistan willdisrupt water supplies.
The 330MW Kishenganga hydropower station, work on which started in 2009, isone of the projects that India has fast-tracked in the occupied territory,amid frosty ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
“This region cannot only become self-sufficient in power but also producefor other regions of the country,” Modi said in the occupied state’scapital, Srinagar. “Keeping that in mind we have been working on variousprojects here for the past four years.”
Pakistan has opposed some of these projects saying they violate a WorldBank-brokered treaty on the sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries,upon which 80 percent of its irrigated agriculture depends.
“Pakistan is seriously concerned about the inauguration (of the Kishengangaplant),” the Pakistani foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.”Pakistan believes that the inauguration of the project without theresolution of the dispute is tantamount to violation of the Indus WatersTreaty (IWT)”.
The Kishanganga project was delayed for several years as Pakistan draggedIndia to the International Court of Arbitration, which ruled in India’sfavour in 2013.
India has said the hydropower projects under construction in occupied Jammuand Kashmir are “run-of-the-river” schemes that use the river’s flow andelevation to generate electricity rather than large reservoirs, and do notcontravene the treaty.