ISLAMABAD: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said on Sunday that only the people of Kashmir, not Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, could give their verdict on the future of Kashmir. Responding to Swaraj’s statement that Jammu and Kashmir belonged to India and Kashmir would never become part of Pakistan, Aziz said, “Such a verdict on the future of Kashmir can only be given by the people of Kashmir and not by the external affairs minister of India. This right has been promised to the people of Kashmir by the UN Security Council,” Aziz said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office. He said it was high time that India allows the people of Jammu and Kashmir to exercise this right through a free and fair UN-supervised plebiscite. Once the majority of the people of Kashmir have voted to join either Pakistan or India, the world would accept this verdict, he added. Swaraj had objected to the statement of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in which he called Burhan Muzaffar Wani a martyr. She said; “For India he was a wanted terrorist.” In this regard, Aziz said, “Here again, India cannot ignore the fact that over 200,000 Kashmiris participated in the funeral prayers of Burhan Muzaffar Wani in 50 different locations throughout Indian Occupied Kashmir despite strict curfew clamped in the Valley, which still continues 15 days after Wani’s extra-judicial murder on 8 July 2016. Let us not forget, as one Indian writer has reminded us, that not long ago the British labelled Indian freedom fighters as traitors and terrorists because at that time India was considered an integral part of the British Empire.” He said the government and the people of Pakistan remained firmly committed to their moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris’ indigenous movement for self-determination and resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions. Pakistan, he said, urged the UN, international community and human rights organisations to play their role to stop the Indian atrocities in the Indian Occupied Kashmir against innocent and defenseless Kashmiris. Separately, Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani asked the Kashmiri people not to pin any hopes on the visit of Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Kashmir. In a statement here Geelani said, “Those who have pinned any hope on this visit are living in a fool’s paradise, as our 70-year experience with India stands testimony to the fact that they were never sincere and realistic regarding Kashmir.”