Islamabad, Sep 26 (PTI) Pakistan on Thursday said that the OIC Contact Group on Kashmir has reaffirmed its support for the Kashmiri people and asked India to address the issue in accordance with the UN resolutions and the wishes of Kashmiris.
India has previously hit out at the 57-member grouping of Muslim-majority nations, saying bodies like OIC should refrain from allowing vested interests to exploit its platform for comments on the internal affairs of the country.
India has emphasised that the OIC has no locus standi to comment on matters related to Jammu and Kashmir, which is an integral and inalienable part of India.
In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Office Thursday said that the Contact Group of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Jammu and Kashmir met Wednesday on the sidelines of the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Chaired by OIC Secretary General Hissein Brahim Taha, the meeting was attended by the representatives of the member states of the Contact Group which include Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Niger and Azerbaijan. A delegation of the Kashmiri people also participated.
The meeting adopted a joint communique, reaffirming the OIC’s consistent support for the “legitimate struggle” of the Kashmiri people for realisation of their right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
It emphasized that durable peace and stability in South Asia remain contingent upon the final settlement of the Kashmir issue.
It said that the communique also condemned the banning of several Kashmiri political parties and the alleged campaign to confiscate the properties of the Kashmiri activists. It claimed that the election exercises in Jammu and Kashmir cannot serve as a substitute for the exercise of the right to self-determination.
The Jeddah-headquartered bloc, which is the second-largest intergovernmental body after the UN, has usually been supportive of Pakistan and often sided with Islamabad on the Kashmir issue. PTI SH ZH ZH
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