Islamabad (TDI): Pakistan on Thursday strongly rejected recent remarks made by India’s foreign minister on Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) as baseless claims while asking his country to vacate occupied areas of the region.
The statement comes from Foreign Office a day after India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, referring to AJK, said the Kashmir dispute would be solved after the “return of the stolen part of Kashmir which is under illegal Pakistani occupation”.
Speaking during a session at the Chatham House think-tank in London on Wednesday, Jaishankar said: “I think the path we are waiting for is the return of the stolen part of Kashmir, which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan. When that is done, I assure you, Kashmir problem will be solved.”
The comments came in response to a question by a journalist about the possibility of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking US President Donald Trump’s involvement to solve the dispute.
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“India has done a good job solving most of the issue,” Jaishankar said, insisting that the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and the elections in the region in October last year were part of that.
He said that “restoring development, economic activity and social justice” was another step towards purported efforts to solve the Kashmir problem.
Responding to those statements during a weekly media briefing today, Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan stated: “Instead of making unjustified claims about AJK, India should vacate the large territories of Jammu and Kashmir under its illegal occupation from the last 77 years.
“We reject the Indian Minister’s statement on Kashmir during an event organized at Chatham House, London, on March 5, 2025,” he said.
Noting that India-occupied Kashmir (IoK) was a globally recognised disputed territory, he said Jaishankar’s remarks “misrepresent the ground realities and contravene the international law”.
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“United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) relevant resolutions stipulate that the final status of Jammu and Kashmir is to be determined through a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices. New Delhi’s prevarication cannot change this reality,” Shafqat said.
Responding to the Indian minister’s claims about the polls held in IoK in 2024, the FO spokesperson said: “We also wish to highlight that any electoral exercise pursuant to the Indian constitution cannot serve as a substitute to grant of right to self-determination.”
