The UN Security Council Friday discussed the "dangerous" situation in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK) for the first time in over 50 years at Pakistan's request. "The voice of the Kashmiri people has been heard," Pakistan's Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi, who received briefings from some Council members, told reporters at the stake out. "Their voice has been heard in the highest international forum."
"This belies India's claims of support in the Council and it nullifies its propaganda that Jammu and Kashmir was an internal matter," she said, adding that it again confirmed the international status of the dispute.
Discussions in the meeting, she said, also reaffirmed that the Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, which call for a plebiscite, were alive and remained central to the resolution of the dispute, while also reinforcing what the OIC, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, international human rights organizations, and above all the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had said about the deteriorating human rights situation in occupied Kashmir.
"The consensus in the Security Council for a peaceful settlement of the dispute is a clear endorsement of Pakistan's position that this is an international dispute which must be resolved by political means and not by unilateral coercive means," Ambassador Lodhi said.
She said briefings were given to the Council by UN officials about the political and human rights situation as well as the volatile situation along the Line of Control (LoC).