ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday categorically rejected as baseless and misguided the remarks made by the official spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs on China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), calling it an effort to politicise the project.

In a statement, the Foreign Office spokesperson said CPEC was a transformational project and a harbinger of stability, mutual cooperation and shared development for the region.

As a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative and hallmark of the Pakistan-China All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership, CPEC provides a vehicle for the people of the region to break from zero-sum approaches, he remarked.

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He said China’s investment in CPEC had helped Pakistan overcome the energy and infrastructural bottlenecks that once constrained growth and development.

Attempts to cast aspersions over CPEC show India’s insecurity as well as the pursuit of a hegemonic agenda that has held back socioeconomic development in South Asia for decades, he commented.

While rejecting India’s fallacious assertion that CPEC impinges on its sovereignty and territorial integrity, the spokesperson pointed out that it was in fact India that was illegally occupying the state of Jammu and Kashmir for over seven decades.

He said India’s attempts to mislead the international community about the status of Jammu and Kashmir and to hide its atrocities against the Kashmiri people would never succeed. India was cautioned to desist from falsehoods and baseless claims over a territory that it continued to illegally occupy through brute force, he added. The spokesperson said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute remained an internationally recognised dispute on the United Nations agenda and “its solution lies in exercise of the right of self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people”.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2022