India, Pak in ugly spat over Sushma’s speech

UNITED NATIONS: The message that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India should be “loud and clear” to Pakistan, India asserted on Monday, asking whether the government in Islamabad can clarify how safe havens for terrorists continue to flourish under its watch.

In its ‘Right of Reply’, India also rejected the “fanciful and misleading” remarks by the Pakistani envoy to the United Nations.

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, earlier exercised the Right of Reply to Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s UNGA address, saying Swaraj’s remarks were a “litany of falsehoods” about Pakistan and a “travesty of facts and history”.

In her speech, Swaraj asked Pakistan to give up the dream of snatching Jammu and Kashmir and said all India had received in response to unprecedented peace overtures were a string of terror strikes and the export of crossborder terrorism.

Lodhi said Jammu and Kashmir can never be an integral part of India and is a “disputed territory”, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council.

“...It appears that the distinguished representative of Pakistan did not hear clearly what our minister of external affairs stated during her address earlier today,” Eenam Gambhir, first secretary in the Indian Mission to the UN, said. Quoting from Swaraj’s address, Gambhir said Jammu and Kashmir is India’s integral part and will always remain so. “We hope that the message is loud and clear,” she said.

Gambhir said India rejects “entirely” Lodhi’s “sermons”, calling her remarks “the views of a dysfunctional state which builds atrocity upon atrocity on its own people, preaching about values of tolerance, democracy and human rights”.

India slammed Pakistan for making a “fanciful and misleading” presentation on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, saying Lodhi’s remarks aim to divert the attention from Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror and do not answer questions posed by the world community.