Pakistan is to “forcefully” present its stance on India’s “state terrorism” in Jammu & Kashmir at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York, the Foreign Office said on Thursday.
“PM Nawaz Sharif is going to take this issue very forcefully at the UN platform,” Nafees Zakaria, Foreign Office spokesman, said in his weekly press briefing. Zakaria said Pakistan has always raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir at the annual UNGA session and mentioned Sharif’s speech at last year’s session “where he strongly highlighted the internationally recognized dispute”.
He said most UN Security Council members had “already been taken onboard on the continued human rights violations” in Kashmir Valley.
Meanwhile, Islamabad on Thursday said it would welcome any team of human rights observers sent by the UN to the part of Kashmir under its control, a day after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights appealed to both India and Pakistan to grant his team access to Kashmir.
Voicing concern over alleged human rights violations, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein yesterday appealed to both India and Pakistan to grant his team access to Jammu & Kashmir as well as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK).
Pakistan Foreign Office, in a statement, said it would welcome any UN team of human rights experts.
“While welcoming any UN team that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights may wish to send” to PoK, “we cannot accept equating the rampant human rights violations” in Kashmir with the situation in POK, the Foreign Office said.
“In fact, today the contrast between grim reality” in Kashmir and the peaceful situation in POK could not be more stark, it claimed.
“It is, therefore, essential” that the UN fact finding team must visit Kashmir, it added.
Pakistan last month had requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to send a fact-finding mission to Kashmir to report on the “gross violations of human rights” since July 8.
The Foreign Office claimed that POK is an area “open to everyone” and is frequented by foreign tourists and members of the diplomatic community in Pakistan, including representatives of the UN, where they have observed recent elections and met a cross section of people.