UNGA president likely to visit Pakistan on 27th

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday said President-elect of the United Nations General Assembly Ambassador Volkan Bozkir was expected to visit Pakistan on Monday.

Qureshi said he would take this opportunity to bring to the notice of Bozkir the worst human rights situation in the world, particularly the atrocities committed by the Indian armed forces in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Turning to Wednesday’s visit to the LoC by foreign journalists, Qureshi said this visit to Chirikot was an important step by Pakistan and challenged India to allow journalists into the IOJ&K.

"Will India follow suit and allow independent media to visit the occupied valley?" he asked when India has even denied access to UN observers who are allowed to visit and observe violations on Pakistan’s side of the LoC.

The foreign minister said it was not only Pakistan that India had bad relations with, as even China, Nepal and Bangladesh too had strained relations with New Delhi. “The expulsion by Iran of India from the Chabahar project is also because of its wrong policies and this was due to its Hindutva mindset,” he said.

Iran recently announced that India was no more part of the Chabahar rail link. “The so-called impression of a ‘Shining India’ is over now owing to the incumbent government’s policies of hatred and bias,” he said.

Later in the weekly media briefing at the Foreign Office, the spokesperson also pointed to the visit to the Chirikot Sector by foreign journalists. “They witnessed for themselves the destruction and injuries caused to the civilian population along the LoC. They also witnessed the multilayered surveillance and defense system along the LoC erected by India which completely negates the hollow allegations by senior most military and civilian officials of India and the constant propaganda by the Indian media against Pakistan of cross border infiltration and the so-called launch pads,” she pointed out.

In recognition of its international obligation, Pakistan promulgated the Ordinance 2020, under which Jadhav and India were invited to file review proceedings before the Islamabad High Court. Neither has done so till date.

“Necessary steps have been taken in this regard, including provision of unimpeded and uninterrupted consular access to India. India has, however, been using various pretexts to hinder the process for review and reconsideration. The first consular access was provided on September 2, 2019,” she said.