UN should play more proactive role on Kashmir: Pakistani daily
By IANSSaturday, October 9, 2010
ISLAMABAD - The UN’s silence on the “rampant human rights abuses” in Kashmir is beyond comprehension, a Pakistani newspaper said Saturday, urging the world body to do more to press India to accept its resolutions which offered a “guaranteed solution” to the dispute.
Referring to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s statement Thursday that the UN would play a role in Kashmir only when both India and Pakistan wanted it to, an editorial in the Nawa-i-Waqt slammed the Pakistani government for being remiss in its “responsibilities to the Kashmiris” and in presenting its case before the UN and the global community.
“Mirwaiz Umer Farooq was right when he observed that Pakistan had not fully committed itself to fulfilling the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. First it was (former president Pervez) Musharraf who made every effort to please India and sometimes it is the current Pakistani government which has made such an individual, whose father and grandfather were firmly opposed to Pakistan, the chairman of the National Assembly’s Kashmir Committee,” it said.
“If Pakistan had presented its case well, then Ban Ki-moon would not have been setting such conditions for the UN’s intervention,” it said.
The editorial said that despite the Kashmir issue being on the agenda of the Security Council, it was paying no attention to the “trampling of human rights there”.
“The UN resolutions on the Kashmir issue are there. Why must the UN wait for the request of India and Pakistan to meditate? Given the current situation in the Valley, it is a fit case for its intervention,” it said, contending that under the UN charter, it is within the rights of the UN secretary general to intervene in a crisis situation.
The editorial called on the Pakistani government to take the support of China and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries and press Ban under Article 99 of the UN Charter.
“India must also adopt a serious attitude to solving the Kashmir dispute and honour and implement the UN resolutions which offer the best solution,” it said.
