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- Last week, Hissein Brahim Taha visited areas near Line of Control that divides the disputed Kashmir region
- India's external affairs ministry condemned the trip, said OIC had no "locus standi" on the Kashmir dispute
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's foreign office on Thursday rejected India's condemnation of a recent visit of the secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to the Pakistani side of the disputed Kashmir region, calling the Indian position “untenable”.
Hissein Brahim Taha arrived in Pakistan on a three-day visit last week, during which he visited areas near the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the Himalayan Kashmir valley between parts governed by Pakistan and neighbouring India. Speaking to reporters in Muzaffarabad, Taha said the OIC's priorities included the Kashmir dispute, and he had come to Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) to draw the attention of the international community to the issue.
On Tuesday, the Indian external affairs ministry condemned the visit and said the OIC had no "locus standi" on matters related to Kashmir.
“We reject the statement of the Indian ministry of external affairs on the recent visit of the OIC secretary-general and we consider this statement untenable,” Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said at a weekly briefing in Islamabad, responding to India's position.
Baloch said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute was one of the oldest internationally recognized disputes on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and remained unresolved due to India’s "unwillingness" to implement UNSC resolutions.
“In that backdrop, it is important that the international community, including the OIC, continue to play their role in highlighting the atrocities in IIOJK [Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir],” she said.
Pakistan and India both claim Kashmir in full, but rule only parts, and have fought two of their three wars over the area.
The LOC runs 742km (460 miles) and acts as part of the de facto border between the two nuclear-armed nations. The military frontline, which crosses through inhospitable terrain, has separated hundreds of families and even divided villages and mountains. It is often the site of cross-border shelling and skirmishes between the militaries of the two nuclear-armed nations.