NEW DELHI, Nov 30: A Pakistani fighter jet on Monday was detected o be flying very close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir, even as India rejected resolutions adopted at a meeting of foreign ministers of member states of the Organisation of Islamic Conference for incorporating Pakistan-sponsored references on India and Kashmir. India rejected the resolutions as “factually incorrect, gratuitous and unwarranted.”
A defence ministry spokesman said the jet flew close to the LoC in Poonch sector in violation of international conventions which did not allow fighter jets to fly within a 10km radius of the border.”
The spokesperson said that a jet stream was clearly visible in the sky close to the LoC in Poonch. Recently, a few drones had been spotted near the Line of Control.
Pakistan ignoring international conventions amidst continuous ceasefire violations was being viewed as a possible reaction to India’s stand on the OIC resolutions despite that Kashmir issue was not on the official agenda for the meeting of the OIC’s council of foreign ministers (CFM) held in Niger during November 27-28.
Pakistan proposed a resolution on the Kashmir issue to compensate for OIC’s decision not to include the matter in the agenda, and this referred to matters such as the scrapping of the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and alleged human rights abuses in the region.
“We strongly and categorically reject the factually incorrect, gratuitous and unwarranted references to India in resolutions adopted by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) at the 47th CFM session in Niamey, Republic of Niger, held on November 27-28, 2020,” the external affairs ministry said in a statement.
“We have always maintained that OIC has no locus standi in matters strictly internal to India, including that of union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral and inalienable part of India,” the statement said.
“It is regrettable that OIC continues to allow itself to be used by a certain country, which has an abominable record on religious tolerance, radicalism and persecution of minorities, to indulge in anti-India propaganda. We strongly advise the OIC to refrain from making such references in future,” the statement added, in a reference to Pakistan.
The Niamey Declaration issued at the conclusion of the OIC meeting included a reference to the Kashmir issue at the insistence of Pakistan. The declaration reiterated “OIC’s principled position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute for a peaceful settlement in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.”
The OIC adopted the resolution despite Pakistan’s current strained relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two key players of the OIC. Saudi Arabia has sought an early repayment of a $3-billion loan provided to the Imran Khan government in 2018 after it was irked by Islamabad’s efforts to forge a new grouping of Islamic countries along with Turkey and Malaysia. The UAE last week temporarily suspended issuing visas to citizens of Pakistan over security concerns. Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi raised this matter with his UAE counterpart during the OIC meet in Niger but reportedly did not get any positive response, official sources said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s COVID-19 tally has crossed four lakh mark while 8,000 patients lost their lives. Globally, the caseload of Covid-19 has crossed the 63 million mark and is currently at 63,064,506, as per a worldometers tally. The tally also shows that nearly 14.7 million people have succumbed to the virus while more than 43 million have defeated it. The United States, India, Brazil, Russia and France, in that order, are the five worst-hit countries. Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Argentina and Colombia are next on the list.
(Manas Dasgupta)
