United Nations, Nov 16: The Jammu and Kashmir dispute remains on the
United Nations Security Council’s agenda, a UN spokesman categorically stated
while rejecting as “inaccurate” reports that it has been removed from the list
of unresolved issues.
“Some articles today on Kashmir are
inaccurate,” UN Spokesman Farhan Haq said, referring to those reports.
He said the latest list of matters the Security Council is seized of “continues
to include the agenda item under which the Council has taken up Kashmir which, by a decision of the Council, remains on
the list for this year,” the spokesman added.
Earlier, a spokesman for the Pakistan Mission clarified that Pakistan’s Acting
Ambassador Amjad Hussain Sial, in his speech to the General Assembly on Friday,
November 12 had referred to the omission of Jammu and Kashmir dispute in a
statement by the President of the Security Council, and NOT from the Council’s
Annual Report-as reported in a section of press.
“The agenda item entitled, ‘India and Pakistan Question’, which covers Jammu
and Kashmir dispute, is duly mentioned in the Annual Report of the Security
Council and is also present on its agenda,” spokesman Mian Jehangir Iqbal said
in a statement.
In his statement, the 15-member Council’s President for the current month,
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, while presenting the Annual Report to the
192-member assembly, did not mention the Kashmir dispute in the context of
unresolved long-running situations, despite the fact decades-old issue is
included in the Annual Report.
“We understand this was an inadvertent omission, as Jammu and Kashmir is one of
the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council,” Ambassador Sial
remarked, after Grant’s statement.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon, who is on a visit
to Pakistan, said there was no question of the Kashmir issue being dropped from
the Council’s agenda. “The Security Council Report in its annexures is
explicit,” he said in a statement.
“The President of the Security Council, the Permanent Representative of the UK,
is amply clear on the subject and is cognizant of the matter. I would request all
concerned not to speculate unnecessarily upon the subject”. (Agncies/Writer-South Asia)
