Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has, from the podium of United Nations General Assembly, called for settling the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan through ‘peaceful means’.
In his address to the 193-member assembly, he regretted that despite the UN resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, the valley has been invaded and occupied, saying there may be reasons for this action but it is still wrong. “The problem must be solved through peaceful means,” Mahathir said, adding, “Ignoring the UN would lead to other forms of disregard for the world body and the rule of law.”
On the lingering question of Palestine, the Malaysian prime minister said the first action of the United Nations was the creation of the State of Israel, seizing Arab land and expelling 90 per cent of the Arab population. “The result was terrorism when there was none before, or not on the present scale,” he said.
Mahathir acknowledged that Malaysia accepts Israel as a fait accompli but cannot accept Jewish settlements or occupation of Jerusalem. Muslims, he said, are accused of terror even if they did nothing, and their states are destabilised by regime change.
The prime minister said there were no massive migrations in the past, but now wars and regime change force people to flee their countries. Noting that democracy is not the easiest form of government to operate, especially when it is adopted overnight, he called for time for gradual change. “Otherwise the result is violence, civil wars or more harsh regimes,” he cautioned.
Turning to the fate of Rohingya people in Myanmar, he noted many colonies in the West had expelled natives from their countries, but never as brutally as in Myanmar. The Rohingya dare not return to Myanmar because they cannot trust its military, due to the helplessness of the world in stopping atrocities, he added.
Separately, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s call for a peaceful resolution to Kashmir dispute drew a rather unsolicited response from India, which termed the top Chinese diplomat’s UNGA speech an attack on its ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’. New Delhi insisted that the disputed Himalayan territory was its ‘integral part’, urging all nations to respect its ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’. “We expect that other countries will respect India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and desist from efforts to change the status quo through the illegal so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,” India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on Saturday.
Referring to the Indian government’s illegal and unilateral move of revoking occupied valley’s semi-autonomous status, Kumar said the recent developments were entirely a “matter internal to us,” India Today reported.
Addressing the 74th session of UN General Assembly on Friday, Wang Yi had called for effective management of Kashmir issue. He had also stressed that no actions should be taken that would unilaterally changing the ‘status quo’. “Kashmir issue, a dispute left [unresolved] from the past, should be peacefully and properly addressed in accordance with the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreement,” he had maintained.
