Bilawal Bhutto says will rally for Kashmir

Srinagar/New Delhi: Amid India’s assertion that Pakistan is fanning trouble in Kashmir, Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto on Thursday called up separatist Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Mr Farooq and said rallies would be held on Friday to show “solidarity” with people of the state.

Mr Bilawal, the son of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former President Asif Ali Zardari, told Farooq over phone that he was concerned over the “abject human rights violation and the deteriorating situation” in the Valley, said a spokesman of the Hurriyat Conference.

The PPP leader told the Mr Farooq that to express solidarity with the people of Kashmir, his party would organise programmes and take out rallies all over Pakistan after the Friday prayers, the spokesman added.

Meanwhile, with Pakistan launching a tirade against India on the Kashmir situation at the United Nations on Thursday, India hit back with all its might and reminded it of its dubious record in providing a safe haven for terrorists.

Launching a broadside, New Delhi accused Islamabad of “extolling the virtues of terrorists, providing sanctuary to UN-designated terrorists and coveting the territory of others”, even as the ministry of external affairs said Pakistan has been “fomenting discontent” in Jammu and Kashmir by lending support to terrorists besides infiltrating terrorists and “using terrorism as an instrument of state policy”.

Pakistan misusing UN platform, says India
Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto phone call to separatist Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq came even as India said Pakistan has no locus standi in the developments in Kashmir and asked it to refrain from interfering in it.

At the UN, where there was a full-blown diplomatic war between the two neighbours, India accused Pakistan of “misusing the UN platform” to raise the Kashmir issue. India’s ambassador to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin, delivered a hard-hitting statement after provocative remarks by Pakistan’s envoy Maleeha Lodhi on Kashmir and Hizul Mujahideen poster boy Burhan Wani’s killing during a debate on human rights in the General Assembly in New York Wednesday. In her statement, Ms Lodhi called Wani’s killing extra-judicial.

But New Delhi was swift to respond. The Indian envoy to the UN said, “Regrettably, earlier today we have seen an attempt at misuse of this UN platform. The attempt came from Pakistan; a country that covets the territory of others; a country that uses terrorism as state policy towards that misguided end; a country that extols the virtues of terrorists and that provides sanctuary to UN-designated terrorists; and a country that  masquerades its efforts as support for human rights and self-determination. Pakistan is the same country whose track record has failed to convince the international community  to gain membership of the Human Rights Council in this very session of the UNGA.”