Foreign Office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar on Friday rejected the Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman's remarks regarding the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation moot in Pakistan, saying the obstruction of the SAARC process was an “established fact.”
India on Thursday said here has been “no material change” in the situation since 2014 and there was “no consensus” that would allow the holding of the summit. The Indian foreign ministry had said that in response to questions at a briefing. Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had reiterated the country’s invitation to India and other members of Saarc for the next summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad, saying New Delhi could join the moot virtually if it does not want to be present in person.
“Motivated by its partisan reasons, and acting in violation of Charter provisions requiring exclusion of bilateral issues, India was responsible for stymieing the 19th SAARC Summit scheduled to take place in Pakistan in 2016,” he said in a statement.
The spokesperson alleged that India’s attitude was rendering a valuable platform for regional cooperation increasingly dysfunctional. Pakistan expressed hope that India would review its self-serving approach and enable the Saarc process to move forward for the progress of the peoples of South Asia, he added.
“For its part, Pakistan remained ready to host the next Saarc Summit as soon as the artificial obstacles created in its way were removed,” it read
Iftikhar further alleged that no amount of obfuscation by the Indian officials could hide India’s state terrorism in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
“The egregious violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people had been extensively documented by the international human rights machinery, including in the two Kashmir reports issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2018 and 2019,” he said, adding that Pakistan had shared several dossiers with the international community on India’s human rights abuses in IIOJK and its “state terrorism” against the Kashmiri people and in Pakistan.
He said that India must “abjure” the use of state terrorism as an instrument of policy. “Pakistan will continue to resolutely oppose Indian machinations and expose its anti-peace agenda imperilling regional peace and security,” he added.
Iftikhar urged India to recognise the reality of the Kashmiri struggle, respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people, and grant them their right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
