LAHORE, March 2: Expressing grave concern over India’s threat to revoke the Indus Waters Treaty, irrigation experts at a seminar have said that India wants to render Pakistan into a desert by depriving it of its legal right on water of three western river of Indus Basin.

The seminar was held by the Nazaria-i-Pakistan Foundation at the Aiwan-i-Karkunan-i-Tehrik-i-Pakistan here on Saturday.

Former UN and World Bank’s chief technical adviser B.A. Malik said that the Indus Waters Treaty was an international treaty signed by Pakistan, India and the World Bank. India cannot revoke it unilaterally and starve tens of millions of people of Pakistan just to avenge an allegedly dubious terrorist attack on its parliament.

He said that water was not like rail, road and air services which had been stopped since January 1 this year by an order. For stopping the water flow to Pakistan India was required to build large storages and diversion barrages which would take many years to construct.

However, he said Islamabad must exercise extra vigilance to watch various machinations by which India might attempt to reduce or delay the supplies of water from three western rivers of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to the detriment interest of Pakistan’s agriculture.

He said that Islamabad was also required to stop the process of building gated spillways and other structures which might affect the water supply to Pakistan. For this purpose Pakistan had all legal provisions to invoke under the treaty.

He said that if India dared to terminate an international treaty like IWT it would cause an uproar in the world.

Would not be there strong protests against India and support for Pakistan by the international community, particularly by the seven friendly countries which provided huge funds to the gigantic Indus Basin project which was aimed at replacing the water of the three eastern rivers given over to India, he asked.

He said that the threat of revoking the treaty was just an Indian ploy to boost the morale of its people and frighten the people of Pakistan, but eventually it would boomerang against India itself.

Former chief engineering adviser to the federal government Chaudhry Altaf Hussain was also of the view that India cannot revoke the Indus Waters Treaty as it was an international agreement finalized after a long process of negotiations among the irrigation experts of the World Bank, Pakistan and India. The fund created for implementing the treaty was raised by the World Bank itself and seven western countries.

He said that there was proper machinery to check any violation of the treaty by either country and there were legal forums to settle the differences and international tribunal to resolve the disputes.

He said that the treaty had survived two Indo-Pakistan wars. What was required was proper vigilance by Islamabad to see manipulations of the treaty by India to the disadvantage of Pakistan and immediate action to move the machinery set up for its implementation.

He said that the treaty was all comprehensive and had provisions for use of three western rivers for the development of Kashmir state without providing storages with gated spillways and diverting their supplies to Pakistan.

He regretted that Pakistan’s representative on the Indus Commission was not working and holidaying abroad. Any negligence and carelessness could cause great harm to Pakistan and India could manipulate supplies to its advantage.

He lamented that no government had ever framed national water policy which could guide the nation about its future water requirements and the ways and means of meeting them.

He said that a World Bank report issued in 1964 had said that Pakistan would require as much as 26 million acre feet of additional water by 1992. He said that no effort was made to add 26 maf of water while the water requirements continued to increase with the growing population.

He said that the per capita availability of water had dropped from 5,000 to 1,000 cubic meters with four-fold increase in population during the past 54 years and the country was fast approaching to water famine condition of 800 cubic meters.

Former federal minister and agriculture expert Chaudhry Sultan Ali said that Pakistan must lodge a strong protest against India. He said that India had the tradition of violating international agreements and resolutions and the Kashmir’s UN resolution was one of them.

India succeeded in manipulating the Indo-Pakistan boundary commission award depriving Pakistan of Muslim majority areas of the Punjab. Though India cannot scrap the waters treaty as it was an international treaty, it could do great mischief by manipulating and misinterpreting its provisions.