India can’t decide future of Kashmiris: Pakistan

Pakistan on Sunday said that India had no right to decide the future of Kashmir.

Pakistan’s foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz said the “verdict on the future of Kashmir” can only be given by the “people of Kashmir, not by the external affairs minister of India.”

In a late-night statement, Mr Aziz said the UN Security Council had promised the Kashmiris right to determine their own future. He said India should allow the people of Jammu and Kashmir to exercise this right through a free, fair and UN-supervised plebiscite in the valley.

Mr Aziz said government and the people of Pakistan remained firmly committed in their moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris’ indigenous movement for self-determination. He urged the UN, the international community and human rights organisations to play their role in stopping atrocities in Kashmir against innocents.

Earlier, Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said there was extreme pain and anguish among the people of Pakistan on the brutalities being committed against the unarmed and innocent Kashmiri people who are only exercising their right to peaceful protest. He said that Pakistan categorically rejected the Indian claim that Kashmir was its integral part. The comments came after India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj accused Islamabad of an ‘unabashed embrace of terrorism’ and warned its stated goal of detaching Kashmir from India ‘will not be realised to the end of eternity.’ Ms Swaraj’s attack was targeted directly at Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who told a rally last day in Pakistan Administrated Kashmir that the Kashmir would soon become part of Pakistan. Mr Sharif said the freedom movement cannot be stopped and will be successful as he prayed for the people of Kashmir suffering from the brutality of Indian forces.