MANHATTAN: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Friday expressed the hope that India and Pakistan would be able to engage in a “meaningful dialogue” to resolve their disputes, pointing out that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had clearly spoken about the deteriorating rights situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
“The UN has clearly done its job in that regard,” the UN chief said in response to a question from a Pakistani journalist at a crowded press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, his first in the new year. He was referring to the damning June 14 UN report that calls for the establishment of a ‘commission of inquiry’ to investigate the grave human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The report accused Indian armed forces of “unlawful killings by using brute force, sexual violence against female-folk, use of one of the most dangerous weapons pellet-firing shotguns against the civilian population.”
The report also emphasized that dialogue between India and Pakistan that “includes the people of Kashmir” the resolve the problem. Guterres said that he has been offering his good offices in relation to the dialogue between the two countries that until now had “no condition of success.” “I hope that the importance of both the Indian and Pakistan is such in international affairs (that) I hope that the two countries will be able to engage in a meaningful dialogue,” he said when his attention was drawn to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s peace gestures that have not elicited a positive response from India. Pakistan has been calling on the United Nations to set up a ‘commission of inquiry’ — the world body’s highest-level probe — to investigate the human rights abuses in Kashmir.