India dismisses Pak attempt to rake up Kashmir at UNGA

India has dismissed as "unwarranted" Pakistan's attempt to rake up the Kashmir issue at the UN General Assembly and reasserted that the state remains an integral part of the country.

Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Masood Khan raked up the Kashmir issue in the third committee of the UNGA in a session on the right of people to self-determination, repeating his country's position that Jammu and Kashmir is "not an integral part of India".

India, speaking at the session after Pakistan, said it is regrettable that an "unwarranted" reference to Jammu and Kashmir is made at the UNGA and is a distraction from the important issue of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination that was being discussed in the committee which deals with human rights and social issues.

"We regret the unwarranted reference made in this forum to the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Let me be clear and reiterate that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, and references such as this only detract from the important cause of the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights to self-determination," visiting Member of Parliament from India P Rajeev said.

Alluding to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement at the General Assembly in September, Khan had said India wrongly stated that the epicentre of terrorism is in Pakistan.

"The struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be characterised as terrorism. Nor can 'epicentre of terrorism' be wrongly located by India to Pakistan, simply because it raises the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in the United Nations. Pakistan is the worst victim of terrorism, whose sources, strategies and execution emanate from our immediate neighbourhood," Khan said.

In his address to the General Assembly and while visiting Washington, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had sought UN and US intervention to settle the Kashmir dispute with India.

India considers the UN resolutions as outdated and in his address to the UN General Assembly, Singh had virtually rejected Sharif's demand for resolution of the Kashmir issue on the basis of these resolutions.

Singh had said that India favoured settlement of all issues on the basis of the Simla Agreement of 1972.