The Foreign Office (FO) on Thursday said India had “no right” to blame the UN Security Council and its members for their resolutions on the Kashmir dispute when it was the one to originally approach the UN about the issue in 1948.
FO Spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan uttered the comments while responding to a journalist during his weekly press briefing about Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar’s remarks on the second day of the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi on Tuesday.
In his remarks, the Indian foreign minister had said: “After the Second World War, the longest standing illegal presence and occupation of a territory by another country pertains to India, what we saw in Kashmir. Now we went to the UN, what was an invasion was made into a dispute. So the attacker and the victim were put on par, who were the culpable parties? [the] UK, Canada, Belgium, Australia and [the] USA.”
He had said there was a need for a “strong” UN and that required a “fair” UN.
Responding to the remarks, the FO spokesperson said: “We are alarmed that the frequency of Indian leadership’s unwarranted assertions about Jammu and Kashmir has increased. In this context, we wish to make a few things clear, especially with regard to the remarks made by the Indian EAM at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi.
“It was India that took the Jammu and Kashmir issue to the United Nations in 1948. Today, it has no right to blame the Security Council and its erstwhile members for the resolutions that were subsequently adopted.”
Khan said that the “repetition of baseless claims” could not deny the fact that Jammu and Kashmir was an internationally recognised disputed territory whose final status was to be determined by its people through a UN-supervised plebiscite, as stipulated in the relevant UNSC resolutions.
He said Pakistan believed in peaceful co-existence, adding that a peaceful settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, under the relevant UNSC resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiris was essential for a lasting peace in South Asia.
Earlier this month, the FO spokesperson had similarly rejected remarks made by Jaishankar on Azad Jammu and Kashmir as “baseless claims” while asking his country to vacate occupied areas of the region.
Speaking during a session at the Chatham House think-tank in London, Jaishankar had said: “I think the path we are waiting for is the return of the stolen part of Kashmir, which is under illegal Pakistani occupation. When that’s done, I assure you, Kashmir [issue is] solved.”
The comments came in response to a query by a journalist — who said India was occupying Kashmir illegally — about the possibility of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking US President Donald Trump’s involvement to solve the dispute.
“I think we have done a good job solving most of [the problem],” Jaishankar said, insisting that the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and the polls in the region in October 2024 were part of that.
He had added that “restoring growth, economic activity and social justice” was another step towards purported efforts to solve the Kashmir issue.
Responding to those statements, the FO spokesperson had said: “Instead of making baseless claims about Azad Jammu and Kashmir, India should vacate the large territories of Jammu and Kashmir under its occupation from the last 77 years.”
Noting that India-occupied Kashmir was an internationally recognised disputed territory, the FO official said Jaishankar’s remarks “misrepresent the ground realities and contravene the international law”.
Indian involvement in Jaffar Express attack
Questioned about reports of Indian involvement in last week’s Jaffar Express train attack in Balochistan’s Bolan district, as well as generally in Pakistan, the FO spokesperson said: “Indian involvement is clear. They have been involved in terrorism in Pakistan. And secondly, it’s not just Pakistan. They have been trying to destabilise the entire region, all South Asian countries. And they also have been running, a global assassination campaign sponsored by their country, and their involvement is very clear to us.
