FO rejects India’s ‘False’ claims about SAARC, IIOJK

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday categorically rejected India’s “false claims and tendentious remarks” about SAARC and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

“India’s obstruction of the SAARC process is 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,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said.

“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 spokesperson said 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,” he said.

“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.”