Srinagar, India, Jan 23, IRNA -- Chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state, Omar Abdullah backed New Delhi on withdrawing the UN Military Observers Group in Kashmir, saying that the mission had played no role in reducing Indo-Pak tensions across the LoC, and had no bearing on the Kashmir issue.
“The presence of the UN Military Observers in the state has no connection with the Kashmir issue,” Abdullah told reporters here. “But still some people may try to create confusion over the issue.”
“The posting of the mission (the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan, or UNMOGIP) was aimed at reducing tensions between India and Pakistan,” he said.
“When it was posted over three decades ago, it had been assigned to monitor the line dividing the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and play their role to de-escalate tensions between the two countries,” he said.
“But in actual fact, nothing of this role has been seen over the past thirty years,” he said.
“The UN Military Observers were duty-bound to ensure that India and Pakistan respected the Line of Control, but they failed in this also,” he said.
“Whenever Indo-Pak tensions have mounted across the LoC and whenever the situation has deteriorated, nothing has been seen of the UNMOG’s role,” he said.
“It has played no part in de-escalating frontier tensions or bringing the situation under control,” he said.
Meanwhile reacting to Indian demand for winding up the UN Military Observers mission in Kashmir, the leader of the Hurriyat Conference ‘ridiculed’ the demand, and launched an attack on pro-India parties.
“Kashmir is an internationally-acknowledged political issue over which the UN has passed several resolutions,” the Mirwaiz said at a Milad function at the Hurriyat (M) headquarters here.
“Though the world body has itself failed to get its own resolutions implemented, Indian demands (of withdrawing the UNMOGIP) are ridiculous and amount to questioning (the relevance) of the UN,” he said.
The Mirwaiz came out with a furious attack on pro-India parties in Kashmir which, he said were misleading the masses with their belated statements of talks with militants and demands of plebiscite.
“Pro-India parties are misleading the people with such bogeys because they are themselves the biggest hurdles in implementing the UN resolutions on Kashmir.
“On the one hand they speak of holding talks with militants, and on the other, when we visit Pakistan to talk to leaderships at all levels, they use the media to accuse us of being in league with terrorists,” he said.
“Those who talk of plebiscite today continue to be hurdles in UN resolutions even today. They are the forces who have eroded the state’s political position for the sake of power, ruin its economy, and spared no effort to sell off its natural resources,” he said.
