Pakistan on Tuesday gave U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres a dossier accusing India of stoking terrorism in Pakistan, a day after India provided a dossier to certain U.N. Security Council (UNSC) members accusing militants from Pakistan of attempting an attack in the disputed Kashmir region.
The tit-for-tat moves come ahead of India joining the 15-member council for a two-year term starting Jan. 1, 2021.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram accused India of violating international law, the U.N. Charter and Security Council resolutions by sponsoring terrorism.
According to Reuters, he said Pakistan called on Guterres and the international community "to take note of Indian terrorism and subversion against Pakistan and to prevail on India to desist from these illegal and aggressive activities."
Earlier this month, Pakistan’s foreign minister unveiled evidence to the United Nations and other international bodies that India, its neighbor and archrival, is involved with militant organizations on Pakistani soil.
Pakistani officials claimed that India sponsors violent groups in Pakistan, providing comprehensive details and specific accusations. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said India sponsors the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan and ethnic Baloch armed separatist groups that conducted attacks on Pakistani soil, according to Qatar-based Al Jazeera.
A spokesperson for India's mission to the United Nations in New York denied the charges Tuesday.
"Pakistan can cry hoarse from the rooftops. But they cannot change the fact that they are the epicenter of terrorism," the spokesperson said. "Their lies have no takers."
The Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan, with both claiming Kashmir in full but ruling it in part. U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed since 1949 to observe a cease-fire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
India said on Monday that four rebels, belonging to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, made their way into Indian Kashmir through a tunnel last week and opened fire when their truck was stopped for a routine inspection.
Pakistan has rejected allegations of any involvement in the alleged attack, saying it was an attempt to divert attention from India's repression of the people of Kashmir.
“The completely baseless and unsubstantiated Indian allegations are nothing but a reflection of desperate efforts on India’s part to salvage its false terrorism narrative against Pakistan and to divert international attention from its state-terrorism in IIOJK (Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir) and state-sponsorship of terrorism against Pakistan,” said Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri in a statement.
Last August, the Indian government stripped Kashmir of its limited autonomy, prompting an angry response from Kashmiris. They have accused New Delhi of trying to bring demographic changes by imposing laws that allow outsiders to buy land in the Himalayan region.
The UNSC blacklisted the head of Jaish-e-Muhammad in May last year after China dropped its objection to the move, ending a decadelong diplomatic impasse.
