Qureshi mounts multi-pronged attack on India at UN

Pakistan mounted a multi-pronged attack on India at the UN General Assembly, bringing up Kashmir, alleging Indian links to the Pakistani Taliban, opposing Security Council reform and criticizing the US and others who provide defence equipment to New Delhi.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who spoke after India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had delivered a scathing attack on Islamabad for promoting terrorism, tried to portray his country as the victim on terror.

Speaking in Urdu, he trotted out an allegation that India was behind the Pakistani Taliban that carried out the Army school attack in 2014 that killed about 150 students.

He also mentioned Kulbhushan Jadhav as its evidence of India's involvement with terrorism in Pakistan

While supporting Security Council reforms, Pakistan will "oppose the creation of new centres of privilege and prestige," a reference to expanding the permanent membership of the Security for which India has staked a claim.

Without naming the US, he criticized it for undermining "strategic stability in our region" through "discriminatory approaches by certain states to supply advanced military hardware and sensitive technologies."

This is an apparent reference to the US giving India the Strategic Trade Authorization One status allowing it to acquire advanced US military equipment and its backing for New Delhi to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Qureshi expressed support for the report on Kashmir presented by Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and said that it was ready to welcome the international commission of inquiry he proposed.

He said that Pakistan wanted talks with India, but the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed out of it on "flimsy grounds," but made no mention of the killing of three security personnel in Kashmir, which India cited as the reason to call off the most recent talks.

He harked back to Security Council resolutions on Kashmir from several decades ago that have been rendered redundant by the course of history, including the Simla agreement between the two countries in 1972.

He praised Chinese President Xi Jinping as a "world leader of great sagacity" for creating the Belt and Road initiative and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

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

--IANS

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