India has responded strongly to United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) president and Turkish diplomat, Volkan Bozkir’s, comments in Pakistan that the latter is “duty-bound” to raise the Kashmir issue in the UN more often.

On Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said, “We express our strong opposition to the unwarranted references made with respect to the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir by the President of the United Nations General Assembly (PGA) Volkan Bozkir during his recent visit to Pakistan.”

The MEA added: “When an incumbent President of the UN General Assembly makes misleading and prejudiced remarks, he does great disservice to the office he occupies. The PGA’s behaviour is truly regrettable and surely diminishes his standing on the global platform."

MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said: “His remarks that Pakistan is “duty bound” to raise this issue in the UN more strongly are unacceptable. Nor indeed is there any basis for comparison to other global situations”.

The Dawn reports that Bozkir had said in Islamabad on Thursday that the Kashmir issue does not get the same attention as the Palestine issue. He said: “It is the duty of Pakistan government to bring it to the United Nations platform more forcefully,” adding that he would offer to hold a debate on Kashmir in the UNGA if Pakistan can muster the support of a group of countries.

The Indian stand on Kashmir is the exact opposite. India believes that it is not just Pakistan but China also who have illegally occupied portions of Kashmir through force and in complete violation of international law.

In 2001, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had ruled out the implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir. In his proposal on finding a resolution to the Kashmir issue, made after a four-nation tour of South Asia, he had suggested that a lasting solution to the problem lay in implementing the Lahore Declaration.

Over decades, Pakistan has steadily lost support in the UN for Kashmir as the international body has realised that the situation after the 1947 annexation of parts of Kashmir by Pakistani forces and non-state millitia has undergone a drastic change.

In April 1957 itself, the then UN Representative for Jammu & Kashmir, Gunner Jarring, in his report to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), had commented: "The Council will furthermore be aware of the fact that implementation of international agreements of an ad hoc character, which has not been achieved fairly speedily, may become progressively more difficult because the situations with which they were to cope has tended to change.”

According to various media reports, another UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali was keen to delete the Kashmir matter from the UNSC list of pending disputes as matters not considered by the Security Council for a period of five years are not to be incorporated into its agenda.

Over the years, several members of the UNSC have urged both India and Pakistan to resolve the conflict bilaterally, which India too has agreed with. However, with Pakistan acceding some of the Kashmir portions to China, the situation on the ground has changed irrevocably. With conditions on the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan and also on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China changing considerably due to the unilateral actions of the two countries, the situation in Kashmir has become more complicated.