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The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned in the strongest terms recent wave of Indian terrorism in Occupied Kashmir and expressed deep concern over the atrocities and human rights violations in the valley.
In a resolution adopted by the 46th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Abu Dhabi, the OIC member states reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir
It reaffirmed its unwavering support for the Kashmiri people in their just cause and reminded the international community of its obligation to ensure implementation of UN Security Council resolutions on the dispute.
In the context of
It also welcomed Prime Minister Imran Khan’s renewed offer of dialogue to India and the goodwill gesture of handing over the Indian pilot.
The resolution called for restraint and de-escalation as well as the need to resolve outstanding issues through peaceful means.
In another significant development, the OIC elected Pakistan as a member of its Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission from the Asian region, in
The OIC adopted two other resolutions sponsored by Pakistan on international disarmament and non-proliferation issues and reform of the UN Security Council.
The strong OIC support to the people of Indian Occupied Kashmir and the centrality of this core issue to regional peace
The OIC is a grouping of 57 countries,
Meanwhile, tensions between Pakistan and India have heightened after New Delhi blamed Pakistan for
Pakistan welcomes OIC resolution
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that OIC resolutions condemning Indian brutalities in Occupied Kashmir have endorsed the unanimous resolution passed by the Joint sitting of the parliament.
Speaking in National Assembly, which met with deputy speaker in the chair, on Monday, he said, “we have achieved our goal by abstaining the OIC session held in Abu Dhabi, which Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj could not get by going there.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, on Monday said that ongoing troubles with India in Kashmir threaten Pakistan s attention and considerable influence in a potential peace agreement aimed at ending an 18-year conflict involving US and Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
“The current crisis between Pakistan and India will obviously mean that Pakistan will have to put its full focus on its eastern border and it could affect what it is trying to do on the front with Afghanistan,” Maleeha Lodhi told Fox News. “In other words, our full focus is going to be on the eastern frontier rather than the western front and that could affect the peace process. Our attention is going to be where we feel there is a military threat to us.”
And Pakistan believes that threat is from the Indian border, Lodhi emphasized.
Indian officials have for decades tried to suppress the separatist insurgency, which gained momentum in the late 1980s with the backing or at least the quiet acceptance of Pakistan, according to many observers in the international community. Pakistan has denied such accusations and consistently accuses India of committing mass human rights violations against the Kashmiri population.
India embarrassed
Reacting to the OIC resolution, New Delhi had Saturday asserted that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the issue is strictly internal to the country.
The strongly worded resolution by the OIC’s ministerial meeting in Abu Dhabi condemning state terrorism in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK) brought embarrassment and a setback to the anti-Pakistan agenda of Narendra Modi’s government.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s dream of getting into 57-Muslim nations body using backdoor fell flat when the OIC exposed jingoistic Indian face to the world just a day after its foreign minister Sushma Swaraj addressed its plenary as ‘guest of
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the inaugural plenary of the 46th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of OIC on Friday. She was the first Indian minister to address the OIC meeting.
India’s participation came despite strong demand by Pakistan to rescind the invitation to Swaraj to address the grouping which was turned down by the host UAE, resulting in Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi boycotting the plenary.
Swaraj attended the meeting in Abu Dhabi on March 1 as the guest of
“As regards the resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, our stand is consistent and well known. We reaffirm that Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of India and is a matter strictly internal to India,” spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Raveesh Kumar said.
Congress slams
Meanwhile, The Congress on Sunday said the Modi government claims that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) inviting India to attend its plenary was a diplomatic success has fallen flat with the 57-nations grouping adopting a resolution that “supported” Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
“External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the OIC meeting in Abu Dhabi. The NDA-BJP government touted it as a huge diplomatic success for India that it has been invited to attend the plenary…But what happened in Abu Dhabi is extremely disturbing for India,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.
Tewari said the Congress would like to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi and EAM Swaraj whether this was “the diplomatic achievement”.
