UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has complained to the UN Security Council that India is building a wall along the Line of Control and plans to convert the LoC “into a quasi international border”.

India has dismissed the charge as incorrect and pledged to respond at an “appropriate time”.

Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, sent two letters to the UNSC on Sept 4 and 9, sharing Islamabad’s concern over the construction of this wall.

In the Sept 9 letter to president of the Security Council, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Ambassador Lodhi expressed “deep concern” at the development and said that India planned to construct a 10-metre-high and 135-feet-wide embankment (wall) along the 197km LoC.

Indian officials described the LoC as “the boundary between Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir”, increasing Islamabad’s fear that New Delhi was quietly trying to change the status of the disputed line.

India also claimed that one of Pakistan’s letters to the UNSC was based on a `submission’ made by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin.

Pakistan rejected the Indian claim, saying that the letters it had sent to the UNSC were based on the information it collected from its own sources.

Pakistan “considers the embankment a permanent structure that will bring about a material change in the territory in violation inter alia of ... Security Council resolution ... of 1948”, Ambassador Lodhi wrote.

“The state of Jammu & Kashmir is an internationally recognised disputed territory with a number of United Nations Security Council resolutions on the official status of Jammu & Kashmir awaiting implementation,” she said.

Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry told a Saturday evening news briefing that Pakistan would not tolerate the wall that India was building on the working boundary.

He said the construction would be a serious violation of UN resolutions that “very clearly state that no entity will build any structure or wall at the LoC or the working boundary”.

“We will raise the issue of the latest Indian aggression at every international forum,” he said.—M. H. and A. I.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2015

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