Non-implementation of Kashmir resolution is UN's persistent failure: Maleeha Lodhi

Pakistans Ambassador to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi has said that non-implementation of the Kashmir resolutions is the "most persistent failure" of the UN.

Addressing the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee, Lodhi said on Friday that for over six decades the UN Security Council has failed to implement resolutions promising a plebiscite to allow the Kashmiri people to determine their destiny.

"This is the most persistent failure of the United Nations," Lodhi said.

Lodhi also said that Jammu and Kashmir "never was and can never be" an integral part of India. "It is disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council," she said.

Her remark comes after Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said at the UN General Assembly last month that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will remain so, and that Pakistan should cease to covet the state.

Targeting India, Lodhi said: "Generation after generation of Kashmiris has only seen broken promises and brutal oppression."

"Today the Kashmiri people have risen again in unison against an occupation," Pakistan Today quoted Lodhi as saying.

She termed the current uprising in the Kashmir valley, in which 90 people have been killed since July 9, as "the worst form of state terrorism, a war crime, which India has perpetrated by its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir for decades".

"Uniform, comprehensive and non-selective implementation of United Nations resolutions should be our focus," she said, adding: "Selective implementation erodes confidence in the system and undermines the credibility of the organisation."

--IANS

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