Kashmir issue: Pakistan, India trade verbal barbs at UN

Indian external affairs minister claims Himalayan state was an “integral part” of India.

MIRPUR: Representatives of Pakistan and India had a verbal duel in the UN General Assembly in New York Monday night over the decades-old Kashmir dispute between the South Asian rivals. Reacting to Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s assertion earlier in the day that last week’s remarks by President Asif Ali Zardari on Kashmir were “unwarranted”, Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Raza Bashir Tarar defended the Pakistani leader’s statement as the dispute, he said, remained unresolved. “Let me begin by emphasising that the reference to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in the President of Pakistan’s statement was not ‘unwarranted’,” Ambassador Tarar said, while exercising his right of reply to Krishna’s statement. In his statement, the Indian external affairs minister also claimed that the Himalayan state was an “integral part” of India.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2012.