India may shoot down Pakistan’s cry over Kashmir with Uri attack at UNGA session

The General Debate of the UN General Assembly opened on Tuesday, with US President Barack Obama making his final appearance as Commander-in-Chief at the 71st session. Sharif will address world leaders from the UNGA podium in the morning session on Wednesday. While Pakistan has raised the Kashmir issue at the high-level segments of the General Assembly and other UN platforms in previous years, Sharif appears set to take an even more aggressive stand on Kashmir at the world body, having vowed in Pakistan to ‘emphatically highlight’ the issue and the alleged human rights abuses by India. “Pakistan will continue to extend moral, diplomatic and political support to Kashmiris,” Sharif had said last week, alleging that atrocities in Kashmir had touched extremes.

Describing terrorism as an ‘existential threat’, India has said that ‘hypocrisy’ towards the menace is unacceptable and underlined that terrorism is the ‘principle cause’ of the large-scale refugee movement. “It is important to stress that today the geo-politics of the crisis points proves that terrorism is the principle cause of refugee movements. Can we ignore this fact? We cannot. We do so at our peril,” Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar said in his address to the UN General Assembly’s first-ever summit for refugees and migrants here on Monday.  Akbar asserted that terrorism is an ‘existential threat’ and ‘hypocrisy towards this crisis will not do’. He underscored that for the millions of people fleeing conflict, war and poverty, terrorism is not characterised as good or bad. “There is no good terrorism or bad terrorism and if you do not know the answer to this question, all you have to do is ask the refugee if he considers any terrorism to be good or bad,” Akbar said. “We can only prosper or perish together, it is best that we learn to live in peace, prosperity and amity,” he said.