India’s obstruction of the SAARC process was an established fact: FO Spokesperson

ISLAMABAD, Jan 07 (SABAH): Responding to media questions, Foreign Office Spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad has categorically rejected the false claims and tendentious remarks made by the Spokesman of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in the context of SAARC and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said India’s obstruction of the SAARC process was an established fact. Motivated by its partisan reasons, and acting in violation of Charter provisions requiring exclusion of bilateral issues, India was responsible for stymieing the 19th SAARC Summit scheduled to take place in Pakistan in 2016.

The FO Spokesperson added that India’s myopic attitude was rendering a valuable platform for regional cooperation increasingly dysfunctional. Pakistan hoped that India would review its self-serving approach and enable the SAARC process to move forward for the progress and prosperity of the peoples of South Asia. For its part, Pakistan remained ready to host the next SAARC Summit as soon as the artificial obstacles created in its way were removed.

The FO Spokesperson further added that no amount of obfuscation and misrepresentation by the Indian officials could hide India’s state-terrorism in IIOJK. The egregious violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people had been extensively documented by the international human rights machinery, including in the two Kashmir reports issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2018 and 2019. In addition, Pakistan had shared several dossiers with the international community on India’s unabated human rights abuses in IIOJK and its state-terrorism against the Kashmiri people and in Pakistan.

India must abjure the use of state-terrorism as an instrument of policy. Pakistan will continue to resolutely oppose Indian machinations and expose its anti-peace agenda imperiling regional peace and security.

Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said that India must recognise the reality of the just, legitimate and indigenous Kashmiri struggle, respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people, and grant them their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.