NEW DELHI: India has asked Pakistan to vacate Indian territories under its forcible occupation and take three-fold action to contain terrorism instead of raking up the Kashmir issue, countering caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar claims in his address at the General Debate during the high-level 78th session of UNGA on Friday.
“Pakistan has been the home and patron to the largest number of internationally proscribed terrorist entities and individuals in the world. Instead of engaging in technical sophistry, we call upon Pakistan to take credible and verifiable action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, whose victims await justice even after 15 years,” said Indian diplomat Petal Gehlot.
India was exercising its Right of Reply in the UNGA after Kakar alleged India had evaded implementation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions which called for the “final disposition” of J&K to be decided by its people through UN-supervised plebiscite.
Gehlot said the UTs of J&K and Ladakh were integral parts of India and Pakistan had no “locus standi” to make statements regarding India’s domestic matters.
To Kakar’s claim that J&K was the key to peace in the region, she said: “In order for there to be peace in South Asia, the actions that Pakistan needs to take are threefold. First, stop cross-border terrorism and shut down its infrastructure of terrorism immediately. Second, vacate Indian territories under its illegal and forcible occupation. And third, stop the grave and persistent human rights violations against the minorities in Pakistan.”
Countering Kakar’s claim that India was denying access to human rights bodies, Gehlot said members of the UN and other multilateral organisations were well aware that Pakistan made such claims to “deflect the international community’s attention away from its own abysmal record on human rights”. Citing a “glaring example” of the systemic violence against Pakistan’s minorities, the First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN referred to the large-scale “brutality” perpetrated against the minority Christian community in Faisalabad district in August, where around 20 churches were vandalised and 89 Christian homes burnt down.