India to take more water from Indus, squeeze Pak
TREATY REVIEW Blood and water cannot flow together, says PM Modi UN ADDRESS Sushma tells neighbour to abandon dream of snatching Kashmir
NEW DELHI: India will explore all options to use as much water as it can within the limitations of a 56-year-old pact with Pakistan over rivers flowing into the neighbouring country, a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided on Monday.
The World Bank-brokered Indus water treaty of 1960 is considered among the most liberal water-sharing pacts in the world and has survived three wars and much bilateral bickering.
The agreement gives control of the three eastern rivers — Beas, Ravi and Sutlej — to India and Indus, Chenab and Jhelum to Pakistan. The pact is seen as generous to Islamabad as it gives lower riparian Pakistan 80% of the water of the western rivers: Indus, Chenab and Jhelum.
But repeated cross-border terrorist attacks and the Pakistani establishment’s refusal to acknowledge such strikes originating from its soil could force India to use the water treaty as a bargaining chip to compel its hostile neighbour to mend its ways.
“Blood and water cannot flow together,” Modi said when he met his top officials to review the pact that took a decade to negotiate and sign.
His remarks reflected India’s anger after Pakistan-based militants killed 18 soldiers at the Uri army base on September 18.
After Monday’s meeting, a message was sent out that New Delhi has options to hurt Pakistan within its legal rights under the water treaty as all political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, from where these rivers originate or pass through, had supported such a move in the past.
But the government didn’t state specifically if the pact would be abrogated or suspended.
The meeting decided the Indus water commissioners from each country will not meet under an atmosphere of terrorism. They have so far met 112 times, at an average of twice a year.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 WASHINGTON: India on Monday asked Pakistan to give up the dream of snatching Jammu and Kashmir, saying all it had received in response to unprecedented peace overtures were a string of terror strikes and the export of cross-border terrorism.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj delivered a stinging riposte to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s speech at the UN General Assembly, saying Pakistan should look within at “egregious abuses” in Balochistan instead of leveling baseless allegations against India.
Swaraj’s address marked the latest exchange in a war of words between the two sides, which has heated up since the terror attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri more than a week ago that killed 18 soldiers. Sharif devoted most of his speech to the Kashmir issue and demanded a UN factfinding mission into alleged rights violations.
India, Swaraj said, had attempted a “paradigm of friendship… without precedent” to resolve outstanding issues but all it got in return was “Pathankot, Uri and Bahadur Ali, a terrorist in our custody whose confession is living proof of Pakistan’s complicity in cross-border terror”.
She added Pakistan remains in denial when confronted with such evidence. “It persists in the belief that such attacks and provocative remarks will enable it to snatch
It (Pakistan) persists in the belief that provocative remarks will enable it to snatch the territory it covets. My firm advice to Pakistan is: Abandon this dream.
SUSHMA SWARAJ, external affairs minister
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,” she said.
Referring to Sharif ’s address on September 21, Swaraj said: “Those living in glass houses should not throw stones.”
Swaraj, who spoke in Hindi, added that “those accusing others of human rights violations would do well to introspect and see what egregious abuses they are perpetrating in their own country, including in Balochistan. The brutality against the Baloch people represents the worst form of state oppression.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6