New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday said the Modi government claims that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) inviting India to attend its plenary was a diplomatic success has fallen flat with the 57-nations grouping adopting a resolution that “supported” Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
“External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the OIC meeting in Abu Dhabi. The NDA-BJP government touted it as a huge diplomatic success for India that it has been invited to attend the plenary…But what happened in Abu Dhabi is extremely disturbing for India,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.
On Saturday, the Pakistan Foreign Office had said the conference concluded in Abu Dhabi with a resolution that “supported” Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. “In a resolution, the OIC member states reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir remains the core dispute between Pakistan and India and its resolution is indispensable for the dream for peace in South Asia,” it claimed.
Tewari Sunday said the Congress would like to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi and EAM Swaraj whether this was “the diplomatic achievement”.
Reacting to the resolution, New Delhi Saturday had asserted that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the issue is strictly internal to the country.
Raveesh Kumar, the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs had said, “As regards the resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, our stand is consistent and well known. We reaffirm that Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of India and is a matter strictly internal to India.”
Swaraj had attended the inaugural plenary of the 46th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of OIC on Friday. She was the first Indian minister to address the OIC meeting.
India’s participation came despite strong demand by Pakistan to rescind the invitation to Swaraj to address the grouping which was turned down by the host UAE, resulting in Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi boycotting the plenary.
Swaraj attended the meeting in Abu Dhabi on March 1 as the guest of honour at the invitation extended by the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates.- PTI
I did not get good vibes about this event from the start. Former EAMs have invariably flown commercial. The OIC has a certain character that does not accord with our status as a secular nation. Its stand on Kashmir is a matter of record. It is a genuine success of Indian diplomacy going back a long time that valuable bilateral relationships have been forged with several prominent Islamic countries, notwithstanding our differences with Pakistan. Mature countries reaching out to each other, on the basis of enlightened self interest, having the maturity and restraint not to ask each other to take sides on third party issues. 2. One cannot use an OIC forum to read the riot act to Pakistan, mainly on terrorism. The Resolution is uncharacterically harsh on Kashmir. We can ignore it, as we have reports from the UNHRC. Let us just say this was not our diplomacy’s finest hour.