India creating complications for Afghan peace process: FO

ISLAMABAD: India has been using terrorism as state policy to destabilise its neighbouring states, and on Thursday Pakistan criticised New Delhi for distortions including attempts of falsification of the contents of the Eleventh Report of the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (MT) and its concocted allegations.

“This reveals that India’s agenda is to create complications for the Afghan peace process. Pakistan has warned the world about the role of spoilers within and outside Afghanistan,” the Foreign Office pointed out.

The spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has misrepresented the Eleventh Report of the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning the Taliban and other associated individuals and entities constituting the threat to the peace, stability and security of Afghanistan, to slander Pakistan.

“Pakistan categorically rejects India’s malicious allegations, which are aimed at misleading the international community,” added the Foreign Office. Explaining this, the FO said that there is no reference to “safe havens” in Pakistan in the Monitoring Team report. “The report is based on briefings provided in Afghanistan to the MT by certain quarters who have long expressed scepticism about the Afghan peace process. This scepticism is not shared by the larger international community, especially the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary General,” it added.

Pakistan underlined that it has been highlighting India’s sponsorship of terrorist organisations in Afghanistan against Pakistan. “The MT report endorses Pakistan’s stance that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is operating from Afghanistan and with Indian support threatens Pakistan and other countries in the region. Pakistan has proposed the listing of several Indian terrorism facilitators on the UN Security Council’s terrorism list along with evidence of their involvement in terrorism. We hope the Security Council will designate them soon,” said the Foreign Office.

The MT has also assessed that foreign terrorist fighters from India are travelling to Afghanistan to join the ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K). Security Council resolutions require India to prevent the travel of terrorists to Afghanistan to join ISIL-K. “The report also notes that an Indian national, the leader of AI-Qaeda in the Indian sub-continent, was killed by international forces last year in Afghanistan. Earlier reports of MT also highlighted the growing strength of ISIL in India and its role in Easter Sunday attack in 2019,” said the Foreign Office.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson also completely rejected what it said was ‘baseless’ Indian contentions regarding Buddhist cultural heritage in Gilgit-Baltistan. The spokesperson said these are part of Indian leadership’s unrelenting anti-Pakistan propaganda. “The Indian allegations are contrary to the historical facts, international law and relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions,” she pointed out.

Pakistan reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory recognised as such by the international community. “The dispute is the longest outstanding item on the agenda of the UNSC which remains unresolved due to forcible, brutal and illegal occupation of a part of Jammu and Kashmir by India since 1947. The regurgitation of false and preposterous Indian claims does not change the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir,” she pointed out.

Instead Pakistan says with its tarnished human rights record in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOK) and abdication of responsibility to protect its minorities from Hindu extremists, the RSS-BJP government has no credentials whatsoever even to feign concern for minorities, either at home or elsewhere.

India's state terrorism and extrajudicial killings in fake encounters in IOK, vandalisation and destruction of minorities’ places of worship including the historic Babri Mosque, lynchings by cow vigilantes under government's watch, Gujarat massacre of 2002 and targeted killings of Muslims in Delhi in February 2020, and rendering millions of people stateless with discriminatory steps such as NRC are well documented by international human rights and humanitarian organisations. Rather than pretending concerns for minorities beyond its borders, it is time for Indian leadership to do serious introspection and take requisite steps to safeguard and protect the lives, rights and places of workshop of minorities in India.

“India must realise that its baseless contentions about Gilgit-Baltistan cannot divert international attention from the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and the need for its immediate resolution in accordance with the relevant UNSC resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiri people,” said the spokesperson.

Till the implementation of UNSC resolutions through a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices, no illegal and unilateral action or repetition of false claims by India can alter the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir, she added.