ISLAMABAD: India on Friday accused Pakistan of being the “prime perpetrator of terrorism” in South Asia hours after Islamabad briefed foreign envoys about Delhi’s refusal to discuss the Kashmir dispute.
Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told envoys of the five permanent UN members and the European Union that Pakistan remained ready for dialogue for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute and welcomed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s offer of allowing his good offices for facilitating Pak-India talks to find a settlement.
The briefing session for P-5 and EU envoys on the situation in India-held Kashmir and Pakistani offer to India for talks on the dispute was held days after India rejected Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry’s invitation to his counterpart S. Jaishankar to visit Islamabad on Aug 29-30 to discuss the Kashmir issue.
Delhi accuses Pakistan of being ‘prime perpetrator of terrorism’ in South Asia
Mr Aziz regretted Indian refusal to discuss the dispute and urged the international community to fulfil their commitments to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under the UN Security Council resolutions.
Indian security forces have killed more than 80 people, besides injuring more than 7,000, including some 500 people who have received serious eye injuries due to use of pellet guns, by using excessive force to quell the protests that have roiled the Valley since the July 8 killing of militant commander Burhan Wani.
Deploring the use of lethal force by the Indian occupation forces against the protesters, Mr Aziz said Indian oppression “cannot deter the valiant people of Jammu and Kashmir from their just struggle for their right to self-determination”.
The Foreign Office in a statement said that the participating “P-5 and EU ambassadors stressed the need to resolve the issue peacefully. They also acknowledged the importance of dialogue to address this long-standing issue and the prevailing grave situation.” Pakistan’s readiness for dialogue was appreciated by them, the statement added.
Continuing with its strategy of reacting sharply to Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts to highlight the aggravating situation in the Valley, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesman Vikas Swarup, speaking to journalists in Delhi after Mr Aziz’s briefing for envoys in Islamabad, said that Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar had in his reply emphasised that it was not just India that had been impacted by “terrorism emanating from Pakistan soil”, but the region knew that “Pakistan is the prime perpetrator of terrorism”.
India, while rejecting the offer to discuss the dispute, had said that it could only discuss “cross-border terrorism” as it considered it to be central to the situation in Kashmir.
Mr Swarup said Secretary Jaishankar had further written to Mr Chaudhry that “agenda before India and Pakistan today is clearly to put an end to cross-border terrorism and incitement to violence from Pakistan”.
The MEA spokesman said that the basis for any further discussions would be the Shimla Agreement of 1972, the Lahore Declaration of 1999 and the Joint Statement of 2004.
Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016
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