Seeking UN's attention on Kashmir issue not a solution: Strategic affairs expert

With Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif seeking UN Secretary General's attention on the Kashmir issue, experts have suggested that it was not a substantive solution to the problem and would lead to nowhere.

"The interference by the secretary general of United Nations in Kashmir dispute is not going to get anywhere, because any kind of solution the UN has in mind is according to United Nation Security Council Resolution 47, which requires a pre condition that Pakistan withdraws all its ammunition and military forces from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). They didn't do it in 1948 and they are unlikely to do it in 70 years later. So it's a dead issue," Bharat Karnad told ANI.

He further said that UN secretary general periodically getting into it is more performance than anything substantive.

Pakistan's new Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Friday sought the UN Secretary General's attention towards the alleged human rights abuses in Kashmir.

Asif strongly condemns "the recent killings in Jammu and Kashmir as well as harassment of Hurriyat leadership", the Foreign Office (FO) said.

Asif also accused India of altering the demography of Jammu and Kashmir by settling non-Kashmiris in the state and sought the Secretary General's attention towards it, the FO said.

Asif reiterated Pakistan's "moral, political and diplomatic support to the people of Jammu and Kashmir."

This comes after the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report for 2016 (IRFR) was released on Tuesday in Washington by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

In Pakistan, the IRFR attributed the attacks on Hindus to claims of blasphemy against Islam and said: "Members of religious minority communities stated the government was inconsistent in safeguarding minority rights, and official discrimination against Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadis persisted."

The report said according to Christian and Hindu organisations girls from those communities "were particularly vulnerable to forced conversions".

-ANI