India rejects Norwegian minister’s Kashmir remarks, flags cross-border terrorism from PoK

India rejected Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide’s remarks on Kashmir, asserting that Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are integral parts of India. MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the international community should instead focus on alleged atrocities in PoK and cross-border terrorism

New Delhi: India on Friday rejected Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide’s remarks on the Kashmir issue and said the world community should be concerned over Islamabad’s use of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for cross-border terrorism. Following his talks with Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar in Islamabad on Thursday, Eide said the two sides discussed regional issues ranging from Jammu and Kashmir to Afghanistan. Dar said he briefed Eide on the “long-standing unresolved” dispute over Kashmir and the new dimension added to the “volatile security situation” by India’s decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal trashed the Norwegian foreign minister’s remarks and said the whole of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh is an integral and inalienable part of India. “Let me say that the whole of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are an integral and inalienable part of India,” Jaiswal said at his bi-weekly media briefing when he was asked about the Eide’s comments.

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“The issue that should concern the international community are the atrocities currently being perpetrated in the illegal Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the use of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for cross-border terrorism,” he said. Jaiswal responded to another question on Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s remarks criticising India’s decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance.

“You are aware of our position on the Indus Waters Treaty and there has been no change in that,” he said. India decided to put the IWT in abeyance as part of a series of punitive diplomatic and economic measures unveiled soon after the Pahalgam terror attack in April last year that killed 26 civilians. New Delhi has been maintaining that IWT will continue to be held in abeyance until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.”