India tastes its first 2020 victory in UN battleground; France, Russia reiterate its stand on Kashmir issue

New York, January 16: Reiterating its stand like it did before, asserting that Kashmir is an internal matter of India, France and Russia stood by the country throughout the entire time. On Wednesday, when a closed-door meeting of the UNSC was called to discuss an issue relating to Mali, an African country, China made a request to discuss the Kashmir issue under the agenda of 'Any Other Business Points'. Pushed by Pakistan, this was China’s third such attempt but to no avail as France stated that it would oppose it like it did in previous occasion. With the help of France and other allies in the UNSC, the attempt failed as a common refrain emerged that Kashmir was a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan. All other 14 member nations refused to entertain the discussion.

 

Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's UN representative backing India in a tweet informed, “UNSC discussed #Kashmir in closed consultations. Russia firmly stands for the normalisation of relations between #India and #Pakistan. We hope that differences between them will be settled through bilateral efforts based on the 1972 Simla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration.”

India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, said, “We once again saw an effort made by one member state of the UN fail in plain view of all others. We are happy that neither alarmist scenario painted by the representatives of Pakistan nor any of the baseless allegations made repeatedly by representatives of Pakistan in the UN fora were found to be credible today.” "We are glad that the effort was viewed as a distraction and it was pointed by many friends that bilateral mechanisms are available to raise and address issues that Pakistan may have in its ties with India," he said.

Akbaruddin later tweeted: "Today @UN...our flag is flying high. Those that launched a “False Flag” effort got a stinging response from our many friends... "

The current move by China, Pakistan's all-weather friend, was the third such attempt since Article 370 was scrapped in Jammu and Kashmir. In August, China pushed for a UNSC meeting on Kashmir. However, the meeting did not yield desired results for China as the member-states maintained that India's move was an internal issue. Then, China had formally asked for closed consultations in the Security Council to discuss India's move after Pakistan wrote a letter on the issue to Poland.

Last month, France, the US, the UK and Russia foiled an attempt by China to discuss Kashmir at a closed-door meeting of the UNSC. China has been critical of India's reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir, and has particularly criticised New Delhi for making Ladakh a union territory. China lays claim over several parts of Ladakh.