Pakistan took exception to the criticism by an Indian delegate of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s U.N. General Assembly speech in which the Pakistani leader forcefully urged the world body to fulfill it’s promise of self-determination to struggling people of Kashmir.
Exercising his right of reply, Pakistani delegate Tipu Usman said that PM Abbasi was only reflecting the sentiments and aspirations of the oppressed and suffering people of Kashmir living under India’s brutal occupation.
Usman, a counsellor at the Pakistani Mission to the UN, was reacting to Indian delegate Eenam Gambhir’s allegations.
“The root cause of all ills of South Asia remains the unresolved Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” the Pakistani delegate told the 193-member Assembly late on Thursday night.
Only the day before, he pointed out that Indian troops shelled across the Line of Control into the Pakistani side of Jammu and Kashmir, killing 10 civilians. “A sad reminder of Indian intransigence and stubbornness. This too shall fail.”
Usman said Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s strategy of “offensive defence and double squeeze” to make India a regional hegemon would never succeed. In this regard, the Pakistani delegate said that Kulbhushan Jadhav– “the Indian operator of mayhem and terrorism” — was caught red-handed in Pakistan, while engaged in sabotage, terrorism and espionage.
The Indian dreams of dominating the region would thus remain just that — dreams, he added.
Responding to an Afghan delegate who accused Pakistan of failing to eliminate terrorist safe havens, Usman urged the
Kabul government to stop blaming others for its problems and work on eliminating its terrorist safe havens and deal with its ‘narco-state’
Addressing Bangladesh, the Pakistani delegate said that the issues of 1971 were agreed and settled under a 1974 tripartite agreement. “We have to move on,” he said.
