The United Nations Security Council continues to be “seized of Kashmir issue” as it is part of its agenda item, a spokesman for the UN Secretary General said on Monday.
He termed news reports that Kashmir dispute was not part of UNSC agenda items “inaccurate”.
Responding to questions on reports published in Indian press, the spokesperson said on record “Some articles today on Kashmir are inaccurate”.
“The authors of these articles may have picked up the most recent addendum to the summary statement of matters of which the Security Council is seized, which publishes only the list of matters which have been considered in a formal meeting since 1 Jan 2007,” the statement said.
The spokesman noted: “They missed in that addendum a paragraph explaining that the full list appears in Add.9 of March 2010, which list 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 issue came up in the UN General Assembly on Monday, in the debate of the UNSC’s annual report. Pakistan called it an “inadvertent error”, but Indian officials managed to convince the Indian media that Pakistan was seeking yet another excuse to bring Kashmir into the UNSC. He said this was the norm and had been so for the past five years.
India will serve as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council from 2011 to 2012, and Pakistan expects to be a member of the Council from 2012.
Pakistan’s acting permanent repre
sentative to the UN, Amjad Hussain Sial’s pretension in the General Assembly last Thursday that “an inadvertent omission” in the annual report of the Security Council had left out Kashmir as “one of the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council” is a desperate attempt by Islamabad to revive the issue in the UN.
Pakistan sees its hope of once again internationalising the dispute through the UN fade rapidly as India prepares to join the Security Council for a two-year term next January and campaigns for a permanent seat in the council, a claim now endorsed by US President Barack Obama.
But by admitting in a General Assembly speech that the UN was no longer seized of the Kashmir issue, instead of lobbying quietly for its re-inclusion, Sial has alerted the world to Pakistan’s predicament and may have seriously damaged his country’s pet cause against India.
A thorough review of UN records by this reporter following Sial’s statement has revealed that throughout this new millennium the annual reports of the Security Council had never even once mentioned Kashmir by name.
A review of the secretary-general’s annual report on the work of the UN has also not cited the Kashmir dispute since 2005. In that last year when Kashmir figured in the report, it was only in the context of welcoming a resumption of bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan, a reference that was favourable to New Delhi.
A European ambassador to the UN, echoing the near-unanimous view at the UN, told this reporter today that as an issue before the world body, Kashmir was “dead as a dodo”. Kofi Annan had admitted when he was secretary-general that Security Council resolutions on Kashmir “cannot be enforced and are not self-implementable”.
The latest Security Council report, the subject of Sial’s pretension, does not mention Kashmir by name even when a passing reference to the Indian state w
ould have been routine in the course of the council’s work. In a reflection of general weariness at the way Islamabad continues to revive this “dead dodo”, the report curiously used the euphemism “the India Pakistan question” when Kashmir actually cropped up in an obscure communication.
The mention of “the India Pakistan question” surfaced in a chapter on “Matters brought to the attention of the Security Council but not discussed at meetings of the Council during the period covered” in Part V of the 230-page annual report.
It was occasioned by a letter from Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, to secretary-general Ban Ki-moon merely conveying the final communiqué of an annual meeting of foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in New York last year.
Although Syria is a friend of India’s, Jaafa
ri had to send the communication to Ban in his capacity as chair of the OIC group in New York. The communiqué called for implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir, but it was quietly filed away by whoever received it here and no action was taken.
In New Delhi, the ministry of external affairs said “we condemn and reject” the OIC communiqué, adding that “the OIC has no locus standi in matters concerning India’s internal affairs.”
UN reports continue to mention the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) set up under UN resolutions, but notes that there were no resolutions about it in 2009-2010.
The Pakistani diplomat who spoke in the General Assembly last week may have had no option in the matter. It is the policy of the Asif Zardari government and the present leadership of the army in Rawalpindi to do everything possible to internationalise Kashmir. But at the UN at least, it is strategy that is failing, at least for now.
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The "India-Pakistan question", which is a euphemism for the Kashmir question, was last discussed in the UN Security Council in 1965 having been first raised in 1948. Since then the Security Council has not discussed the issue.
Earlier this week, the Pakistan envoy to the UN,Amjad Sial, opened the lid on what is probably the worst kept secret in the UNSC -- that Kashmir as an issue has not been raised in the Council for almost half a century, even during the worst of India-Pakistan relations.
The Pakistan envoy protested in the General Assembly earlier this week that the Kashmir issue was "missing" from the UNSC annual list, describing it as an "inadvertent error." Indian diplomats maintained that it was not inadvertent at all, but that the Kashmir issue was a "dead letter".
Later, UNSC spokesperson Farhan Haq clarified that the annual list submitted to the General Assembly only published issues discussed in the Council from January 1, 2007, and that the full list of issues that had ever been discussed by the Council was in an addendum published in March 2010. That list, Haq said, includes Kashmir, which means Kashmir remains a "live" issue in the UNSC, unlike the Indian interpretation that it was a "dead letter".
However, the addendum in question, posted on March 8, 2010, lists "items which were identified in document S/2010/10 as subject to deletion in 2010 because they had not been considered by the Council at a formal meeting during the three-year period from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2009". According to UNSC's own rules, these items would be removed from the list in 2010. Which, say, Indian officials, is what was done.
In 2005, the then UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared that the "plebiscite" issue could not be enforced or self-implemented. But it was after Annan's remarks, made in the context of the resumption of the India-Pakistan dialogue in 2005, that the UNSC dropped the reference to the dispute. In the past five years there has been no such mention.
Facts about Kashmir and its people. 1. They started movement against Maharajah of Kashmir in 1931 to be free. 2.. When India and Pakistan got independence form Britain in 1947. 3. Maharajah of Kashmir wanted to wanted to be independent and signed stand still agreement with Pakistan. 4. The majority of border area of Kashmir wanted to join Pakistan and their was rebellion and they almost took Kashmir. 5. Maharajah of Kashmir sort help from India and they provided conditional help with the proviso that after the rebellion is contained the people should be given chance to decide their future with out any fear, favor, and failure to decide their future whether to join India, Pakistan, and be Independent. 6. The India troops now over two million rather than preserve %26 protect their freedom[s], became brutal occupiers and oppressors. 7. It was India that brought Kashmir Peoples issue before United Nations Security Council and pleaded, promised, pledged, and committed for the right of self determination for the people of Kashmir [Plebiscite]. 8. Their are several these resolutions pending before United nations Security Council. 9. In April 1952 the United Nations Security Council appointed our late Admiral Nimitz, as Plebiscite Administrator to the people of Kashmir their chance to decide their future without any fear, favor, and failure. 10. Mean while Pakistan joined SEATO and CENTO military alliance with USA and India backed out.
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