As was expected, the foreign minister Sushma Swaraj in her UN speech hit back at Pakistan, in what was billed as a “take-down” of the earlier speech by Nawaz Sharif. She said country like Pakistan should have “no place in the comity of nations” as it nurtures and harbours terrorists responsible for the attack worldwide. And Swaraj also called Kashmir “the integral part of India,” something that has rarely been done by India at UN. More significantly, Swaraj also raised Balochistan which is the first time India has done so, in an obvious bid to counter Pakistan’s reference to the prevailing Kashmir situation and dent its human rights narrative on the state. And the foreign minister also named the recently captured Pakistani militant Bahadur Ali to level the Pakistan’s references to the capture of an alleged Indian Navy Officer in Balochistan.
In response, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said in a statement that Swaraj had disowned the United Nations Security Council resolution by calling Kashmir an integral part of India. "Can Indian EAM explain that if Kashmir is an 'integral part of India, why is it on the Agenda of Security Council'," he said on Twitter. And later Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to UN Maleeha Lodhi termed Swaraj speech as a pack of lies, “a vain attempt to divert attention from the grave situation in occupied Kashmir”.
The UN performance of both the countries played out along familiar lines. The two countries have positioned themselves rigidly on the opposite sides of the divide and ratcheted up their old rhetoric on Kashmir. Pakistan has returned to its historical stand on the dispute which makes the UN resolutions as the bedrock for Kashmir solution. And India, which otherwise used to tell the world that Kashmir is a bilateral issue, now calls the state as its integral part. Swaraj told Islamabad in no uncertain terms that it should “abandon the Kashmir dream”. What is more, New Delhi has started revising all previous agreements with Pakistan including Indus Water Treaty. The Government is also mulling withdrawal of the Most Favoured Nation status to Pakistan.
This is a far cry from the promising 2003-07 peace process between the neighbours which had almost pulled off a Kashmir solution. But the former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s four point proposals which envisaged a Kashmir solution without any radical geographical modification and New Delhi’s gradual warming up to the ideas have no resonance any more. And the way situation is shaping up now, there is every possibility that things can take ugly turn if there is no conscious attempt to repair the relations. This is all the more important considering the fraught security situation evolving in the region. An ongoing geo-political re-allignment in the region has created its risks and the opportunities. And an enduring Indo-Pak rivalry will be to the detriment of both the countries. India and Pakistan need to work together to confront the new geo-political challenges facing the region than pursue and further deepen their historical rivalry.
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