India accuses Pakistan of cynically raising Kashmir at UNGA

India has accused Pakistan of cynically exploiting the situation in Jammu and Kashmir at the General Assembly while it was discussing an important issue.

"Such cynical attempts have failed in the past and do not find any resonance in this body," Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu, a First Secretary in India's UN Mission, said on Monday.

He was replying to a reference to Kashmir made by Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi during a debate on the Right to Protect People against crimes against humanity.

"While we are having this serious debate for the first time in a decade on an issue that is of importance to all of us, we have witnessed that one delegation has, yet again, misused this platform to make an unwarranted reference to the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir," Bayyapu said.

"I would like to place on record and reiterate that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India. No amount of empty rhetoric from Pakistan will change this reality," he added.

Lodhi had said that many of the victims of killings and "mass-blinding" are "in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir" and that they "have the further indignity of living under an illegal and alien occupation".

"Against this backdrop, calls for accountability would invariably smack of double standards and selectivity, especially when egregious crimes including killings and mass-blinding are being committed in full view of the international community," she said.

However, Lodhi also said: "At its core, the responsibility to protect, is not a license to intervene in external situations, but, is instead, a universal principle of 'non-indifference', in keeping with historical context and cultural norms of respective settings."

"We should also be mindful that the notion of 'Responsibility to Protect' does not become a mere re-enactment of the discredited 'humanitarian interventions' of the past," she added.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

al/ahm/