United Nations, January 19(KMW) : The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has expressed the hope that Pakistan and India will be able to engage in a meaningful dialogue to resolve their disputes, maintaining that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has clearly spoken about the deteriorating human rights situation in occupied Kashmir.
Antonio Guterres addressing his first press conference of this year at the UN Headquarters in New York said, “I hope that the importance of both India and Pakistan is such in international affairs (that) I hope that the two countries will be able to engage in a meaningful dialogue.”
He said he has been offering his “good offices in relation to the dialogue between the two countries that, until now, had no conditions of success”.
Replying to a question on the human rights situation in occupied Kashmir, Antonio Guterres said that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had produced recently a very detailed report. “So, the UN has clearly done its job in that regard,” he said.
The 14th June 2018 UN report had stated that the Indian forces’ personnel were engaged in unlawful killings by using brute force, sexual violence against female-folk, use of one of the most dangerous weapons pellet-firing shotguns against civilian population in the occupied territory. It has also called for setting up of a Commission of Inquiry – the World Body’s highest-level probe – to investigate these abuses.
