Pakistan's dirty diplomacy: Islamabad uses UN seat to corner India over Kashmir, as leaders insist Army 'never' mutilates corpses | Mail Online
Pakistan's offer to India to let the UN probe the brutal killing of the two Indian soldiers in Mendhar is a well thought out diplomatic ploy.
Pakistan assumed rotational presidency of the UN Security Council on January 1 and this month is crucial. It was planning special sessions on peacekeeping and counter-terrorism, and its offer for a UN probe was aimed at leveraging its position as the UN Security council chair, where this incident near the Line of Control could have been used to reinforce the centrality of the Kashmir issue.
Conventionally it is the Chair of the UN Security Council that decides the agenda of the council and, since rules of procedure of the UNSC are loosely governed, Islamabad could press for a discussion on the issue.
Sources said they were expecting a move by Islamabad to use its month-long UNSC presidency in January to embarrass India, and this incident could have been a good trigger.
With elections due in Pakistan, it also suits the Pakistani government to play up the Kashmir issue. Diplomatic sources told Mail Today that for many years India has resisted Pakistan's attempts to use the UN to raise Kashmir, and by letting the UN probe the case it would give sanctity to a UN role in the whole process.
In any case the UN resolutions are only recommendations and require the cooperation of both sides. They do not fall under Chapter 7, which would make any course of action suggested by the UN Security Council obligatory.
Pakistan said it was prepared to hold investigations through the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) which has a presence on both sides of line of control. Diplomatic sources said there is no UN role, and even the UN military observer group on India and Pakistan has only a symbolic presence in India. New Delhi does not consider their reports or assessments.
Academic exercise
"Their role ended after the 1972 Simla accord, they were only tasked to monitor ceasefire of 1948. We don't take cognisance of anything they do, they may file a report but that will be academic in nature," a government source told Mail Today.
Pakistan prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf will be in New York to chair the January 21 open debate on 'UN Peacekeeping: a multidimensional approach' and Pakistan's foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar will chair a ministerial level session on January 15 on counter-terrorism.
Pakistan began its two-year term as non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council last year and will be the president of the UN body for the month of January for the first time during its present term.
Sources said that under the agenda of continuing threats and challenges posed by international terrorism, and the best ways of formulating and implementing coherent and comprehensive responses, the country plans to portray itself as the victim of terrorism which it is trying to combat.
The UN Security Council has five veto-holding permanent members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - and 10 nations that are elected as non-permanent members without veto.
India has rejected outright Pakistan's proposal for a UN investigation into Tuesday's incident on the LoC, in which two Indian soldiers were killed and the body of one badly mutilated.
No to UN inquiry
The issue figured at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) which was briefed by defence minister A.K. Antony on the incident in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector on January 8 and the subsequent developments.
Based on a Foreign Office assessment of Pakistan's ploy, the government rejected it publicly as well. But New Delhi is also bracing to halt any such resolution or discussion by reaching out to friendly countries.
"We are certainly not going to agree to internationalise the issue or allow the United Nations to hold an inquiry. That demand is obviously rejected out of hand," finance minister P. Chidambaram, who in the past has been consistent on a tough stand with Pakistan, said.
At the last session of the UN General Assembly in 2012 there was a verbal duel between the two countries when Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari raised the Kashmir issue under the UN resolution.
"Kashmir remains a symbol of failures, rather than strengths of the UN system," Zardari had said.
Reacting to this, the then external affairs minister S.M. Krishna trashed Zardari's remarks on Kashmir as "unwarranted".
Cornering India
"Let me also make it absolutely clear that Jammu and Kashmir is neither an integral part of India nor has it ever been," the then Pakistani envoy Raza Bashir Tarar had told the 193-member Assembly.
He had also said the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir had been set out in Security Council resolutions and agreed upon by both Pakistan and India.
Clearly South Block expects that Islamabad will rake up the 1948 UNSC resolution on Kashmir demanding a plebiscite, and will seek to corner India.
Politicians defend Pakistan Army's actions
By Javid Ansari in Lahore
Former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
Former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
Amid outrage in India over the inhuman and brutal killing of two Indian soldiers at the Line of Control (LoC), senior political and religious leaders in Pakistan defended the country's army. They also asked for the process to continue and demanded an impartial, international inquiry into the incident.
Like most others in the Pakistani establishment, former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri sought to internationalise the incident by calling for the United Nations (UN) or independent observers to probe these "counter narratives" on both the sides.
"Let it be investigated by the independent UN observers to verify the counter versions of both India and Pakistan," Kasuri said.
He also defended the Pakistan Army, describing the mutilation and killing of the Indian soldiers as something "the Pakistani army never does".
"The mutilation of a body isn't tolerable and the Pakistan Army doesn't do something like this. We've had five wars - two small and three big - since independence, but we haven't done anything such as this before. Both these (India and Pakistan) are professional armies that fully follow the laid out international conventions," Kasuri said.
Kasuri even tried to downplay the incident by asking everyone to look at it in a wider context.
"If one looks at the timeline and sequence; before this incident Pakistan itself has had an incident (at LoC) with three of its soldiers. One of them died, one was critical and another one was injured," he said.
The ex-minister also defended the VIP treatment received by Former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. Once again, he asked the Indian government to give credible and actionable evidence to the Pakistani government.
"Our judiciary is most independent. It takes on politicians and everyone but we would need proper evidence to ensure that action can be taken against Saeed. We arrested him in the past but he was let off because of a lack of evidence by the courts. The Indian government can provide us evidence and we will surely take action against him," he said.
His view was echoed by conservative cleric Tahir Ashrafi, who is the chairman of the ulema council in Pakistan. He described the incident as unfortunate but said the peace process must continue.
"It is unfortunate, but there is no alternative to peace. Pakistani army doesn't do something like this," Ashrafi said, hinting at some non-state actors in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.
Kasuri added that there were "lunatics on both sides of the border" who did not want the peace process to continue and asked both the countries to not let them succeed.
Shinde points at Saeed's LoC visit before the attack
By Abhishek Bhalla in New Delhi
Recent developments in Jammu and Kashmir and all along the India-Pakistan border prior to the killing of two Indian Army soldiers had given an indication of an impending offensive from Pakistan to the security establishment.
Highly placed sources said the situation all along the India-Pakistan border has been volatile since the hanging of 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Qasab. It's not just along the Line of Control (LoC) where there was a discernible spurt in activity.
Intelligence inputs had given indications of terror groups being active on the Punjab border as well. Sources in the security establishment said there has been a constant flow of intelligence inputs regarding terror groups from Pakistan, supported by the Pakistan Army, making attempts to avenge Qasab's hanging.
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde
26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said activity by Pakistani terrorists (including 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, pictured right) is on the rise.
With infiltration from the LoC on the rise, the Indian forces in December had launched major operations that resulted in neutralising of 14 terrorists.
"This proved to be a major setback for the terrorists. According to our assessment, infiltration was on the rise and that is why encounters took place and militants were killed," home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said.
Shinde also said there is information that 26\11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed was in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir close to the Poonch sector days before the encounter between Indian and Pakistani armies took place.
"We know that he interacted with some people there and we are keen on getting more details about his role," he said.
However, sources in the home ministry said according to a preliminary report prepared by the Intelligence Bureau this was the job of the Pakistan Army and not a terror group.
Away from the LoC, activities on the Punjab border are also being closely watched by intelligence agencies. The threat from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban since the hanging of Qasab has been taken very seriously by the Indian intelligence agencies.
According to reports, the group has traditionally functioned on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but of late there have been indications that it is setting up base in the Punjab province in Pakistan.
The TTP is being supported by other terror groups such as Lashkar-e- Tayyeba in setting up a base close to the Indian border. The Border Security Force (BSF) guarding the border has been put on high alert following the brutal killing of two Indian Army soldiers.
"We have been maintaining a strong vigil as intelligence inputs about infiltration from across the border have been increasing," a senior officer from BSF said.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet Committee on Security was briefed about the incident by defence minister A.K. Antony. It was decided in the meeting that India will not accept Pakistan's proposal of a United Nations probe into the Mendhar killings.
Pakistan troops 'congratulated' for the killings
By Shiv Aroor in Mendhar (J&K)
Intelligence agencies have intercepted an audio communication in which a Pakistan Army unit is purportedly congratulating another one after the Mendhar incident on January 8.
The conversation between the two units also includes "something about a third unit" deployed along the LoC, indicating that more such attacks could take place in the border sectors, intelligence sources said.
The latter part of the audio intercept is disjointed and hence insufficient to pinpoint the area in which the third unit is located, sources said.
Though the crucial audio intercepts point to Pakistan's hand in the attack, there are questions over whether India can use them as evidence against its neighbour, considering Islamabad's non-cooperative nature on such issues.
