India nails Pakistan’s lies at UN, says Islamabad must stop cross-border terrorism

India on Saturday slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the UN for making false accusations against India on Kashmir while Islamabad continues to actively support cross-border terrorism in the region.

Exercising India’s right to reply United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debate, the country’s diplomat Mijito Vinito said, “It is regrettable that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has chosen the platform of this august assembly to make false accusations against India. He has done so to obfuscate misdeeds in his own country and to justify actions against India that the world considers unacceptable.”

In a reference to terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, he said the country that wants peace, would never shelter conspirators of 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.

“A polity that claims it seeks peace with its neighbours would never sponsor cross border terrorism. Nor would it shelter planners of the horrific Mumbai terrorist attack, disclosing their existence only under pressure from the international community,” Mr Vinito pointed out.

Reminding the world body of the atrocities against minorities, the Indian diplomat referred to recent incidents of forced abduction and marriage of girls from Hindu, Sikh and Christian families in Pakistan and “conversions within Pakistan.

He said it’s ironic that the country which has committed “grave violation of minority rights is speaking about minorities on a global platform.”

“Such a country would not make unjustified and untenable territorial claims against neighbours. It would not covet their lands and seek to illegally integrate them with its own. But it is not just about the neighbourhood that we have heard false claims today,” he said.

“The desire for peace, security and progress in the Indian subcontinent is real. It is also widely shared. And it can be realized. That will surely happen when cross-border terrorism ceases, when governments come clean with the international community and their own people, when minorities are not persecuted and, not least, when we recognize these realities before this Assembly,” he said.

On Friday, the Pakistan Prime Minister had said that Islamabad wants peace with all its neighbours, including India, but it is possible only after a “just and lasting solution to the Kashmir dispute.”

Mr Sharif claimed that India’s “illegal and unilateral” actions to change the special status of Jammu and Kashmir further undermined the prospects of peace and inflamed regional tensions.