From UN, India tells Pakistan stop dreaming Kashmir (Roundup)

India on Monday forcefully asked the world to isolate Pakistan for nurturing terrorism and firmly advised Islamabad to stop dreaming it can ever capture Jammu and Kashmir with the help of its aided terrorists.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj lashed out at Pakistan in her reply to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's address to the UN General Assembly last week.

Speaking from the same podium where Sharif spoke last Friday, Sushma Swaraj belittled Islamabad's allegations of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and pointed towards the "egregious abuses" being committed on people in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province.

"The brutality against the Baloch people represents the worst form of state oppression."

She said the world faced the biggest threat in terrorism and the world countries needed to "add steel to our resolve and inject urgency in our response" against the nations that sponsor terror.

"We need to forget our prejudices and join hands together to script an effective strategy against terror. This is not an impossible task provided we have the will. We can do it, we must. Otherwise our future generations will forever hold us to account. And if any nation refuses to join this global strategy, then we must isolate it," she said.

Without naming Pakistan, the Indian minister said there were countries "in our midst...that still speak the language of terrorism, nurture it, peddle it, and export it".

"We must identify these nations and hold them to account. These nations, in which UN designated terrorists roam freely, lead processions and deliver their poisonous sermons of hate with impunity, are as culpable as the very terrorists they harbour. Such countries should have no place in the comity of nations."

In his address to the UNGA, Nawaz Sharif last week praised Burhan Wani, the Hizbul Mujahideen commander, whose killing has triggered a fresh wave of deadly unrest in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Pakistan Prime Minister said his country wanted to have better ties with India and was open to an unconditional dialogue to resolve all issues, including Kashmir.

But Sushma Swaraj rebutted the claim that India has put any conditions for talks "which are not acceptable to" Pakistan.

"What pre-conditions? Did we impose any pre-conditions before extending an invitation for the oath-taking ceremony of our government? We took the initiative to resolve issues not on the basis of conditions, but on the basis of friendship."

She said India had attempted an unprecedented paradigm of friendship in the last two years and took the initiative to resolve all issues with Pakistan "not on the basis of conditions, but on the basis of friendship".

She then listed a series of recent terror attacks India got from Pakistan "in return" for its peace gestures.

She mentioned the January 2 terror attack at an Indian Air Force base in Punjab's Pathankot that killed seven soldiers. She also spoke about the assault on an army camp in Uri of Jammu and Kasmir in which 18 army men were killed.

She said India had a living evidence in Bahadur Ali, an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist captured in Kashmir on July 26, whose confession has proven Pakistan's "complicity in cross-border terror".

"But when confronted with such evidence, Pakistan remains in denial. It persists in the belief that such attacks will enable it to obtain the territory it covets.

"My firm advice to Pakistan is: Abandon this dream. Let me state unequivocally that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so."

--IANS

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