Pak Foreign Minister admits J&K is ‘Indian state

Geneva: Perhaps revealing his inner conscience, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday admitted that Jammu and Kashmir is an “Indian state”.

“India has given an impression to the world that life has returned to normalcy (in Jammu and Kashmir). If the life has returned to normalcy, then I say why don’t they allow you, international media, why don’t they allow international organizations, the NGOs, civil society organizations to go into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and see for themselves what the reality is,” he said here.

Qureshi was speaking to media persons after addressing the UN Human Rights Commission during which he made several claims and levelled unsubstantiated allegations against India.

Pakistan’s move to take the issue to the UNHRC comes after facing rebuff from most of the countries to its attempts to rope in third-party intervention to make India revoke its decision.

It virtually pleaded with countries like the US and Russia and also tried to get support from the Gulf nations by using the Muslim card.

Pakistan has even tried to blackmail the world community with threats of war with India and by saying that it would not be able to help in international war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

However, all nations maintained that they would not like to get involved, with most saying that it is India’s internal matter and some others saying that any issue over Jammu and Kashmir should be resolved bilaterally by India and Pakistan.

New Delhi has maintained that since Jammu and Kashmir has legally acceded to the Union of India in 1947, all matters related to the state are internal.

On abolition of the special status granted to the state in 1950 under Article 370, the government holds that the provision of the Indian Constitution was meant to be temporary in nature and ending of its applicability amounted to no violation of any kind.

India, in fact, has gone a step ahead by saying that any talks with Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir would be related to the territories of the state under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

Published on: Sep 10, 2019 at 17:18 IST

By IANS