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Pakistan on Tuesday voiced its “strong indignation” of India’s plans to convene meetings linked with G20 in India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, saying such a move was “self-serving” on New Delhi’s part.
The third meeting of G20 Tourism Working Group under India’s G20 Presidency will be held from May 22 to 24 in Srinagar, according to the Times of India.
India assumed the year-long presidency of the G20 in December last year. It is set to host a leaders’ summit in New Delhi in early September.
On Friday, India released a full calendar of events leading up to the summit, which included G20 and Youth 20 meetings in occupied Kashmir’s Srinagar and in Leh, in the neighbouring region of Ladakh, in April and May.
According to a statement, the Foreign Office expressed strong indignation at New Delhi’s decision to hold the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Srinagar on May 22-24.
The scheduling of two other meetings of a consultative forum on youth affairs (Y20) in Leh and Srinagar in occupied Kashmir was termed by the FO as “equally disconcerting”.
“India’s irresponsible move is the latest in a series of self-serving measures to perpetuate its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir in sheer disregard of the UN Security Council resolutions and in violation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law,” the Foreign Office said. “Pakistan vehemently condemns these moves.”
The statement further asserted that such events could not obscure the “reality” of Jammu and Kashmir being an internationally recognised dispute that had remained on the UNSC’s agenda for more than seven decades.
“Nor could such activities divert international community’s attention from India’s brutal suppression of the people of IIOJK including illegal attempts to change the demographic composition of the occupied territory,” it added.
By electing to host G20 events in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the FO said, India is once again “exploiting its membership of an important international grouping to advance its self-serving agenda”.
Furthermore, the statement underlined that India, which has a “grandiose vision” about itself and its place in the world, had once more demonstrated that it was “unable to act as a responsible member of the international community”.
The Foreign Office had in June last year cautioned G20 countries against accepting Delhi’s proposal for holding some of the meetings of the bloc’s next year’s summit in India-held Jammu and Kashmir, saying it was India’s attempt to legitimise its illegal control of the disputed region.
The G20 is an intergovernmental forum of the world’s 20 major developed and developing economies, making it the premier forum for international economic cooperation
