ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday rejected India’s assertions over Jammu and Kashmir, saying New Delhi’s unilateral claims cannot change the region’s internationally recognized disputed status.
The statement came a day after India said a United Nations-backed world map should depict the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in line with its official map.
India also said any “inaccurate” or “misleading” representation of the territories would be unacceptable.
New Delhi’s position came two days after India voted for a UN General Assembly resolution aimed at promoting more accurate representations of the relative sizes of the world’s continents.
Jammu and Kashmir has remained divided between Pakistan and India since the two countries gained independence from British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in full but control parts of it. The two countries have fought several wars over the disputed region.
“Pakistan categorically rejects India’s baseless assertions regarding the status of Jammu and Kashmir, which are contrary to internationally recognized facts,” Pakistan’s Foreign Office said in a statement.
It said India’s unilateral actions and “continued illegal occupation” could not change the internationally recognized disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Foreign Office said official UN maps depicting Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory remained the appropriate cartographic representation of its current legal status.
“India’s so-called official maps and unilateral claims of sovereignty have no bearing on the status of the disputed territory,” it said.
Pakistan also described the Jammu and Kashmir dispute as one of the oldest unresolved international disputes on the agenda of the UN Security Council.
The Foreign Office said relevant UN resolutions called for the final settlement of the dispute in accordance with Security Council resolutions and the will of the Kashmiri people through a free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices.
Pakistan urged the international community to press India to stop what it described as human rights violations in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
It also called on New Delhi to fulfill what Pakistan described as its commitment to the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people in line with relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
