Non-implementation of Kashmir resolution is UN's failure: Pakistan

UNITED NATIONS: Raking up the Kashmir issue again, Pakistan has said the non-implementation of UN Security Council resolutions for a plebiscite in the Valley is the "most persistent" failure of the United Nations.

"The decolonisation agenda of the United Nations will remain incomplete without resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, among the oldest items on the UN's agenda," Pakistan's envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi said at a debate yesterday of the Special Political and Decolonisation Committee in the General Assembly.

She said for over six decades UN Security Council resolutions promising a plebiscite under UN auspices to allow the Kashmiri people to determine their destiny, have not been implemented.

"This is the most persistent failure of the United Nations," she said adding that generation after generation of Kashmiris has only seen broken promises and brutal oppression.

She asserted that Jammu and Kashmir "never was and can never be" an integral part of India but is a disputed territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance with several resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Lodhi said the the United Nations has a moral responsibility towards people suffering under colonial domination and foreign occupation.

"There is an urgent need to bring the work on this unfinished agenda to closure and eliminate the last remaining vestiges of colonialism. We hope that we will be able to achieve this shared goal sooner rather than later," she said.