WASHINGTON: A prominent Kashmiri leader, D. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Monday reminded the chief United States delegate at the United Nations about the decades-old Kashmir dispute, saying India’s intransigence was blocking any solution to the conflict that threatens regional peace and security. Fai, who is the Secretary-General of World Kashmir Awareness Forum, an advocacy group, was commenting on US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s recent statement during a television interview about the Ukraine conflict, saying, “What they (Russians) are doing undermines everything that the UN stands for. It undermines the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Kashmiri leader, in turn, posed a question, “Doesn’t Madam Ambassador know that India equally undermines everything that the UN stands for?”
India, he added, also undermines the U.N. Charter by refusing to fulfill its pledge given to the people of Kashmir to exercise their right of self-determination.
“Doesn’t the world community recognize such double standards”, the Kashmiri leader asked in a statement on the eve of India’s 76th Independence Day.
Extending his greeting on the occasion, Fai asserted that India has no legal, moral or constitutional authority to hold celebrations in occupied Kashmir which is a UN-recognized disputed territory.
Kashmir does not belong to any UN member country, as the state’s future is yet to be decided by its people, he pointed out.
He said that UN resolutions on Kashmir were negotiated in detail by a special United Nations Commission with India and Pakistan, and it was only after the consent of both Governments that they were endorsed by the Security Council, making them a binding international agreement about settling the Kashmir dispute.
“Indian Government has betrayed most of its high-minded ideals in Indian occupied Kashmir that marked its entry into the family of nations after long years under the British raj: shocking human rights violations, including more than 100,000 killings in the last three decades alone, torture, rape, mutilations, arson, plunder, abductions, arbitrary detentions, and draconian punishment for the exercise of peaceful political dissent; and, contempt for international law and binding self-determination resolutions of the United Nations Security Council,” Fai said.
Only through international recognition and inclusive representations, a genuine and lasting peace can ensue, he said. “The risks of maintaining the status quo – for Kashmir, South Asia and the world – are too great to ignore.”
Dr. Fai urged the community of nations to seize this opportunity to take an initiative towards bringing about conditions necessary for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute, beginning with the demilitarization of the area of conflict –- the State of Jammu & Kashmir. –Agencies
