Pakistan Tuesday hit back at India for claiming Kashmir to be its ‘integral part”, saying fabrication and obfuscation cannot change the legal, political and historical reality. “Jammu and Kashmir never was, nor is, a so-called ‘integral part’ of India,” Pakistani delegate Asif Khan told the UN Security Council as its day-long discussion on multilateralism and global governance came to a end. Khan, who is minister at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, was reacting to Indian Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish’s claim that Kashmir “has been, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.” The Indian ambassador made that claim in response to Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq, who made a forceful call in the 15-member Council for the resolution of the decades-old dispute, calling it an “open wound” that threatens international peace and security. He also said the Indian occupation forces were indulging in gross abuses of human rights, and called on the Security Council, to ensure the implementation of its own resolutions. In his countering the DPM/FM, the Indian envoy also said that he people of Jummu and Kashmir had voted in large numbers last year to choose their government, and went on to call Pakistan the ” global epicenter of terrorism” Asif Khan, the Pakistani delegate, set the record straight: “Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory,” he told the Indian envoy, adding, “You just need to consult the UN’s official maps to establish this fact.” India, he added, was in its forcible occupation of parts of Jammu and Kashmir, in contravention of multiple resolutions of the UNSC resolutions which reaffirm that the final disposition of Jammu and Kashmir will be decided by its people through a UN supervised plebiscite — through the exercise of the right to self-determination. “This inalienable right – brazenly denied by India for over seven decades in gross violation of international law and the resolutions of this body – is among the most fundamental rights of peoples, an erga omnes right which cannot be rescinded by unilateral actions,” Asif Khan said. Kashmir is being held by India through brutal suppression of its people by an occupation army of 900,000 troops, he said, pointing out that since 5 August 2019, India is illegally undertaking demographic engineering to dispossess and disempower the Muslim-majority of the occupied territory. “Neither force nor fraud will succeed in extinguishing the Kashmiris quest for freedom and self-determination.” No unilateral measures, including any sham elections under foreign occupation, constitute a final disposition of Jammu and Kashmir, the Pakistani delegate said. “Rather than misleading the international community and becoming blinded by hubris, India should implement its international obligation to allow the Kashmiris to exercise their right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions.” Regarding accusations about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism, Asif Khan said It is most ironic that India, which is committing the worst form of state terrorism, was portraying itself as the victim. “Instead of maligning others for terrorism, India should sincerely reflect on its own campaign of orchestrating targeted assassinations, subversion and terrorism in foreign countries, ” he said, adding that in fact India supports and finances terrorism against Pakistan by using its proxies such as Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Majeed Brigade and Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). “For a country that has been called out for running a global terrorism syndicate, No Low is too Low for India. The franchise of Indian State-sponsored terrorism has gone from regional to global – reaching North American shores,” Asif Khan added.