Pakistan fooled its people while China is now officially party to Kashmir dispute: Shabir Choudhry on UNSC informal meeting

On yesterday's closed-door consultation of the UNSC on Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (POK) born Kashmir leader, academician and rights activist said: "Only success of this ‘informal meeting’ is that efforts of Pakistan and their proxies have yielded with the following results: China has officially become another party to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. It was bad enough with two parties, now with three parties there is no chance of any unification or independence."

"Prior to that it was India and Pakistan problem, and people of Jammu and Kashmir were there to suffer that both countries play politics in their name. In future, Jammu and Kashmir dispute may be known as ‘India, Pakistan and China problem’," wrote in his blog the founder and former secretary general and president of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

"In view of the above points, people with common sense can gauge success of this meeting," he said.

He said Pakistan has fooled the people of Jammu and Kashmir and people of their country and "once again, they have proved that they can manipulate and use people of Jammu and Kashmir to advance their agenda on Jammu and Kashmir."

"Because it was an informal meeting, so discussion of this informal meeting was not held in the Council Chamber of the Security, known as horse-shoe table, which has more formal format for meetings. It means, in view of the Security Council, this meeting was not important, it was just an informal chat," he said.

"The important point is both India and Pakistan were not present in the hall where the discussion took place. The Security Council does not issue any statement of informal discussions.
In absence of any formal statement, both India and Pakistan can claim success to please their audience," he said.

Following the UNSC informal meeting, India on Friday said there was an effort to masquerade national statements by two countries [read Pakistan and China] as the will of international community in respect to the removal of Article 370 in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the national position of India remains that the move in Kashmir is an internal issue with no external ramifications.

Soon after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) closed door meeting on Kashmir ended, Syed Akbaruddin, India's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations,  told a news conference at the UN: "Our national position was and remains that the matters related to Article 370 are entirely an internal matter of India. These have no external ramifications."

He said the recent decisions by the Indian government are to promote good governance.

"We are gratified that the Security Council in its closed consultations appreciated these efforts, acknowledged them and indicated that this is the direction in which they would like the international committee to move," he said.