NEW YORK – Decades of India’s occupation of Jammu and Kashmir, coupled withits repression there, has turned the disputed region into a powder keg ofanger and fury — a “volcano waiting to erupt”, Pakistan’s Ambassador to theU.S., Asad Majeed Khan, has said, while underscoring the need for resolvingthe lingering dispute.
“Kashmir is too important and too delicate an issue to be ignoredindefinitely. It needs resolution now,” he wrote in an opinion piecepublished in The New York Daily News, a mass circulation tabloid, aftergiving background to the issue.
“The only solution is a just settlement of the Kashmir dispute inaccordance with the wishes of its people and in line with the UN’s myriadresolutions on the disputed territory,” the Pakistani envoy said in hispiece titled: India’s dastardly, dangerous moves in Kashmir.
Since India’s Aug. 5 annexation, Kashmir has been under military lockdown,with mass arrests of Kashmiri political leaders and activists as well asyoung people under a complete communications blackout, subjecting 8 millionKashmiris to a form of collective punishment.
Having failed to normalize its occupation of Kashmir, Ambassador Khan saidIndia was lashing out, blaming Pakistan and gambling that another militaryescalation on the Line of Control would help the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) externalize the consequences of its repression.
On it’s part, he said Pakistan does not want to be dragged into a“manufactured confrontation”, but warned of a response if Pakistanisovereignty was violated.
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“India has already tested — to its own cost — Pakistan’s resolve to defendits territory once this year,” Khan said, referring to the effectivePakistani response to India’s air incursion in February. “As Prime MinisterImran Khan warned India in February, wars begin because of miscalculation.”
“It’s time for India to let the Kashmiri people choose their own destiny,”Khan wrote, referring to UN resolutions that give Kashmir people the rightto self-determination through a UN-supervised plebiscite.
“Under India’s occupation, they have seen enough dark days,” Khan added.
