India and Pakistan took shots at each other over Kashmir in a heated exchange of words at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
Death of separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani was also brought up as the two nations exchanged bitter words.
Slamming Pakistan, India said the country continues to foment a “culture of violence” at home and across its borders as it hit out at Islamabad for using the platform of the United Nations for hate speech against it.
“A Culture of Peace is not just an abstract value or principle to be discussed and celebrated in conferences, but needs to be actively built into global relationships between and among member states,” First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN Vidisha Maitra said in the UN General Assembly Tuesday during the high-level forum on the Culture of Peace ‘Transformative role of the Culture of Peace: Promoting Resilience and Inclusion in Post-COVID Recovery’.
“We have witnessed yet another attempt today by the delegation of Pakistan to exploit a UN platform for hate speech against India, even as it continues to foment a ‘culture of violence’ at home and across its borders. We dismiss and condemn all such efforts,” she said.
She also called for objective and impartial discussion on religion at the General Assembly and assured the UN that India stood for humanity, democracy and non-violence.
Pakistan push for Kashmir Issue Despite India’s Stance of No Discussion.
Earlier, Islamabad’s envoy to the UN Munir Akram raked up the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and spoke about the late pro-Pakistan leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in his remarks in the General Assembly hall that focussed almost entirely on India and not on the forum’s theme.
Last week, India had pushed for permanently removing discussions on Jammu and Kashmir under the “outdated agenda item” of The India-Pakistan question from the United Nations Security Council’s matters.
Akram said that the UNSC also had not implemented its resolutions and decisions related to the erstwhile state in India.
“Indian representatives are either deluding themselves, or deluding their public, by asserting that they will remove Kashmir from the Security Council’s agenda,” Akram had said, according to Dawn.
Akram argued that the Security Council’s agenda was set under the established rules and procedures and could be changed only by a consensus decision of the council. “A member state cannot change the agenda unilaterally.”