UNITED NATIONS, Oct 15 (APP): Pakistan has told the United Nations that India’s hegemonic pretentions and history of aggression against its neighbours as well as its refusal to engage in dialogue for dispute resolution present a “clear and ominous danger” to international peace and security.
Exercising his right of reply to India’s statement making sweeping allegations against Pakistan at a UN Panel, Pakistani delegate Jehanzeb Khan said New Delhi’s illegal actions in Jammu and Kashmir further compound regional security concerns.
“India’s senior political and military leadership has openly resorted to irresponsible rhetoric against Pakistan, which reflects a dangerous hegemonic mindset,” he told the General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security issues.
“Contrary to the assertion made, these issues are completely relevant to this Committee’s work, as they carry grave implications for regional and international peace and security,” Jehanzeb Khan, a first secretary at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, said, responding to the Indian representative’s claim that Pakistan was raising issues not relevant to the committee’s agenda.
Wednesday’s verbal duel between representatives of India and Pakistan over Kashmir and other security issues was the third within a period of one month.
“The spurious claim that India’s security compulsions are not confined to any geographical region is belied by the fact that over 70 percent of its offensive capabilities are deployed against Pakistan,” the Pakistani representative said.
He cited last year’s statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Rajasthan that India’s nuclear weapons are not for celebrating ‘Diwali’ while boasting that India had the capability to launch nuclear attacks from land, air and sea, Jehanzeb Khan said,
“These reckless statements and irresponsible rhetoric have a direct bearing on matters of regional and global peace and security, as well as on the discussions on nuclear arms, that Indian leadership brandishes and threatens to use.”
He said the Indian representative has also failed to address the facts presented by Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram regarding India’s destabilizing arms build-up and aggressive military policies.
“The international community and the vital organs of the Disarmament Machinery have a duty to take note of these reckless statements and the dangerous policies and doctrines that threaten regional and international peace and security.
As regard Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani representative said the disputed state was neither an integral part of India, nor is it New Delhi’s internal matter.
“In accordance with several UN Security Council resolutions, it is an internationally recognized disputed territory, whose final status is to be decided through a UN supervised plebiscite, and in line with the wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
He strongly rejected the “self-serving and groundless” Indian assertions of so-called “cross-border terrorism”, saying these claims were meant to divert the world’s attention and to justify India’s illegal actions and destabilizing policies.
“The fact of the matter is that it is India has used terrorism as an instrument of its coercive policies against each one of its neighbours; and against its own Muslim population, particularly in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
“The international community does not need lectures from the representatives of a State whose leadership seeks to achieve domestic gains by seriously jeopardizing peace and security in South Asia; which is systematically pursuing its extremist-fascist agenda to the detriment of regional stability, and which is engaged in a brutal suppression of the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiris for their right to self-determination for over seventy years now.”
