Jaishankar slams UN for its Kashmir blunder, says it turned Pakistan’s ‘invasion’ into ‘dispute’

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took a dig at the United Nations over its stand on Kashmir and accused it of turning the Kashmir invasion into a dispute and clubbing the attacker and victim in the same bracket. In his remarks at the session on ‘Thrones and Thorns: Defending the Integrity of Nations’, he also called for having a “strong and fair” UN.

Jaishankar termed Pakistan’s occupation of some parts of Kashmir as “the longest-standing illegal occupation” of territory by another country after the Second World War.

Highlighting Pakistan’s illegal occupation of some parts of Kashmir and the UN’s inability to handle it, Jaishankar said, “After the Second World War, the longest-standing illegal occupation of a territory by another country pertains to India, what we saw in Kashmir. Now we went to the UN, but what was an invasion was made into a dispute. So the attacker and the victim were put on par.”

Notably, the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, including Gilgit and Baltistan, had acceded to India in 1947. In the aftermath of partition, Pakistan, in a display of unilateral aggression, invaded Jammu and Kashmir and has remained an illegal occupier of some of its parts since then.

Stressing the need for a strong and fair UN, Jaishankar said, “So I think we need to have an order; there must be fairness. We need a strong UN, but a strong UN requires a fair UN. A strong global order must have some basic consistency of standards.”

The Raisina Dialogue, which is being held in Delhi from March 17-19, is hosted by the Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs. It is India’s premier conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community.