By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan expressed on Tuesday its vehement disapproval of India’s proposal to host G20-related meetings in India-administrative Jammu and Kashmir, characterizing the move as a “self-serving” act on the part of New Delhi.
India, under its G20 Presidency, is set to hold the third meeting of the G20 Tourism Working Group in Srinagar from May 22 to 24.
The country assumed the year-long presidency in December 2022 and is also scheduled to host a leaders’ summit in New Delhi in early September.
Ahead of the summit, India released a full calendar of events, including G20 and Youth 20 meetings in Srinagar and Leh, in the neighboring region of Ladakh, in April and May.
The G20 is an intergovernmental forum of the world’s 20 major developed and developing economies, making it the premier forum for international economic cooperation.
However, Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) has expressed strong indignation at India’s decision to hold the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Srinagar, calling it “irresponsible” and “equally disconcerting” that two other meetings of a consultative forum on youth affairs (Y20) were scheduled in Leh and Srinagar in occupied Kashmir.
“India’s irresponsible move is the latest in a series of self-serving measures to perpetuate its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir in sheer disregard of the UN Security Council resolutions and in violation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law,” the FO said in a statement. “Pakistan vehemently condemns these moves.”
The FO emphasized that events such as these could not obscure the reality of Jammu and Kashmir being an internationally recognized dispute that has remained on the UN Security Council’s agenda for more than seven decades.
“Nor could such activities divert international community’s attention from India’s brutal suppression of the people of IIOJK including illegal attempts to change the demographic composition of the occupied territory,” it added.
The statement further added that India, by electing to host G20 events in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, is exploiting its membership of an important international grouping to advance its self-serving agenda.
The statement underlined that India, which has a “grandiose vision” about itself and its place in the world, had once more demonstrated that it was “unable to act as a responsible member of the international community”.
Last June, the Foreign Office issued a caution to G20 countries regarding Delhi’s proposal to hold some of the meetings for next year’s summit in India-held Jammu and Kashmir. The office expressed concern that India’s move was an attempt to legitimize its illegal control over the disputed region.
In the decades following India and Pakistan’s independence from British rule in 1947, the Himalayan region of Kashmir has remained a contentious issue between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Both countries hold control over certain parts of the territory while also claiming it in its entirety, leading to three wars, two of which were fought specifically over Kashmir.
Tensions surrounding the Kashmir dispute reignited in 2019 when India’s ruling party, led by far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi, made the decision to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted partial autonomy to the Indian-administered portion of the region.
The current move, which was viewed as a controversial and unilateral decision, further escalated the long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
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