New Delhi: India on Wednesday, October 14, 2020 asserted that Pakistan will have to vacate “disputed territory is its own illegal” occupation of certain parts “sooner or later”.
In a strong rebuttal to certain remarks made by Pakistani representative at the 20th Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers, Secretary (West) in MEA, Vikas Swarup hit back saying: “The only dispute left in what it alleged today as a “disputed territory” is its own illegal occupation of certain parts, which sooner or later, it would have to vacate”.
“It was unfortunate that today’s Commonwealth Meeting was misused by one of our south Asian member state (Pakistan) to pursue its own bigoted, ill-conceived, narrow and unilateral agenda on a multilateral platform,” he said adding, “we were left wondering why it was describing itself; And not surprisingly it came from a globally acknowledged promoter of state sponsored terrorism masquerading as an alleged victim of the same. We heard it from a country that brought genocide to South Asia 49 years back when it killed its own people (finally resulting in creation of Bangladesh)”.
Vikas Swarup said, “This is also the same country that has the dubious distinction of becoming synonymous with the phrase “epicenter of terrorism” and hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the United Nations.For such a country to hypocritically preach about religious minority groups elsewhere, while trampling itself upon the rights of its own indigenous minorities, was indeed most regrettable, and a blatant misuse of this august platform”.
Earlier, Pakistan Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in his speech did not name India but said – “a South Asian state” has allegedly usurped the rights and freedoms of millions, “fanned hyper-nationalism, engineered illegal demographic change in disputed territories, and stoked regional tensions”.
India has snubbed its western neighbour a number of times in recent multinational interactions and fora like Non Aligned Movement meet.
Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan in his speech at NAM meet on October 9 has said, “If we take up issues that divide rather than unite us, reducing our Movement to a platform for venting bilateral grievances or for embarrassing fellow Members, we will soon become a weak and irrelevant entity”.
New Delhi has made it clear on multiple occasions that it “desires normal neighbourly relations” with Pakistan in an atmosphere free from terror, hostility and violence; and the onus is on Pakistan for “creating such an environment”.
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