Pakistan rejects India’s ‘false claims, tendentious remarks’ on SAARC, IIOJK

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office Spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad on Friday rejected his Indian counterpart’s “false claims and tendentious remarks” on SAARC and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

“India’s obstruction of the SAARC process was an established fact. Motivated by its partisan reasons, and acting in violation of charter provisions requiring exclusion of bilateral issues, India was responsible for stymieing the 19th SAARC Summit scheduled to take place in Pakistan in 2016,” said Ahmad in a statement.

The spokesperson said that New Delhi’s “myopic attitude was rendering a valuable platform for regional cooperation increasingly dysfunctional”.

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“Pakistan hoped that India would review its self-serving approach and enable the SAARC process to move forward for the progress and prosperity of the peoples of South Asia. For its part, Pakistan remained ready to host the next SAARC Summit as soon as the artificial obstacles created in its way were removed,” said Ahmad.

On Kashmir, the FO said that “no amount of obfuscation and misrepresentation” can hide India’s state-terrorism in IIOJK.

“The egregious violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people had been extensively documented by the international human rights machinery, including in the two Kashmir reports issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2018 and 2019. In addition, Pakistan had shared several dossiers with the international community on India’s unabated human rights abuses in IIOJK and its state-terrorism against the Kashmiri people and in Pakistan,” said the spokesperson.

Ahmed urged India to “abjure the use of state-terrorism as an instrument of policy”. Islamabad will continue to resolutely oppose Indian machinations and expose its anti-peace agenda imperilling regional peace and security, he added.

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“India must recognise the reality of the just, legitimate and indigenous Kashmiri struggle, respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people, and grant them their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” said the spokesperson.

A day earlier, Indian External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had passed comments on Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s comments in which he had invited New Delhi to attend the SAARC summit virtually if it does not wish to attend the meeting in person.

“We have seen media reports regarding Pakistan foreign minister’s remarks about the SAARC summit. You are aware of the background as to why the SAARC summit has not been held since 2014. There has been no material change in the situation since then. Therefore, there is still no consensus that would permit holding of the summit,” Bagchi was quoted by NDTV.

In the same media briefing, the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson had also responded to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s appeal to the international community to look into India’s state terrorism in Kashmir.