August 16, 2019.
NEW YORK: The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will meet behind-closed-doors on Friday at the request of Pakistan and China to discuss India’s decision to revoke the special status of occupied Kashmir.
The council has taken up the issue of the critical situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir after almost 50 years, because India violated the limits set by United Nations security Council.
Poland, which currently holds the council’s rotating presidency, has listed the matter for discussion at 10am local time (1400 GMT), diplomats told AFP on Friday.
It is extremely rare for the Security Council to discuss Kashmir, which has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947.
Friday’s discussion is not considered a full security meeting but rather referred to as closed-door consultations, diplomats said.
Pakistan had called for an urgent meeting of the UNSC on Monday in a letterto UNSC President Joanna Wronecka.
The last time there was a full Security Council meeting on the Himalayan region was in 1965.
“Pakistan will not provoke a conflict. But India should not mistake our restraint for weakness,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi wrote in the letter.
Moscow does not object to UNSC meeting on Kashmir: Russia
UNSC to meet on Friday to address the situation surrounding occupied Kashmir
“If India chooses to resort again to the use of force, Pakistan will be obliged to respond, in self-defence, with all its capabilities,” he said, adding that “in view of the dangerous implications” Pakistan requested the meeting.
The August 5 decision by India blocks the right of occupied Kashmir to frame its own laws and allows non-residents to buy property there. Telephone lines, internet and television networks have been blocked and there are restrictions on movement and assembly.
The UNSC adopted several resolutions in 1948 and in the 1950s on the dispute between India and Pakistan over the region, including one which says a plebiscite should be held to determine the future of the disputed valley.
UN peacekeepers have been deployed since 1949 to observe a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in occupied Kashmir. AFP, Reuters
