In theatre of absurd, Pakistan talks of river issue while UNSC debates maritime security

United Nations, May 21 (IANS) While the Security Council was debating maritime security and expressing concern over terrorism on the seas, Pakistan tried to bring up a river issue, the Indus water.

That was in keeping with Islamabad's total obsession with matters relating to India, regardless of the topic of discussion, which often makes for a theatre of the absurd.

Without directly naming India but referring to it as “one major country”, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said it “displayed a concerning propensity to usurp and weaponise shared natural resources -- including transboundary rivers -- in flagrant breach of treaty obligations and the principles of good neighbourliness”.

After the terrorist group, The Resistance Front, based in and backed by Pakistan, massacred 26 people in Pahalgam last month, India put the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance.

Smarting under the action, Ahmad said India was “leveraging geography” to "the detriment of the lower riparian state that is Pakistan”.

By avoiding mentioning by name, and using innuendos, he tried to avoid India using the right of reply to expose the assertions.

India’s Permanent Representative P. Harish, who spoke in the session, contemptuously ignored it.

Ahmad pouted over Pakistan’s exclusion from the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), a 23-member group of nations that, besides cooperating on a range of maritime issues, also take a strong stand against terrorism.

The “coercive diplomacy” of “the one major country” has led to “the systematic exclusion of neighbouring states from regional maritime security frameworks, including the Indian Ocean Rim Association”, he griped.

India took the initiative to found the IORA and objects to Pakistan's membership because of its terrorism links. As Pakistan is unable to afford an aircraft carrier and is dependent on the arms alms of China and Turkey, Ahmad also complained about what he called the “aggressive naval expansion” by the “one major country”.

--IANS

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