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Chinese and Pakistan’s latest call for resolving the J&K dispute according to the UN charter and Security Council resolutions was rejected by India on Thursday.
India warned against changing the status quo in the area through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) after China and Pakistan made references to J&K in their joint statement on Wednesday.
A joint statement was released Wednesday following a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Beijing.
Both sides stressed the importance of a peaceful and prosperous South Asia in the joint statement from China and Pakistan, where Xi and Sharif stated that all outstanding disputes must be resolved through dialogue.
As Sharif briefed Xi and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on the situation in J&K, Xi and Li reiterated Beijing’s position that the Kashmir issue was a history-based dispute that should be properly and peacefully resolved…
In New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said references to J&K were “unwarranted” and such statements had consistently been rejected by India.
The spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said J&K and Ladakh have always been integral and inalienable parts of India.
A number of UN Security Council resolutions have been proposed by Pakistan and China to bring the matter back to the UN Security Council’s agenda, but India has steadfastly refused to do so.
Despite the 1972 Shimla Agreement between India and Pakistan and the 1999 Lahore Declaration signed by the two sides, New Delhi maintains that the UN or any third party has no role to play in resolving the “outstanding issues” between them. New Delhi, however, claims that Pakistan illegally gave China 5,180 sq km of Indian territory in 1963.
He added that New Delhi had repeatedly expressed “protests and concerns” to China and Pakistan over the CPEC because it included projects in the “sovereign territory” of the country.
“We reject any attempt to change the status quo in that area by using such projects,” the MEA spokesperson said.
