Daily Times

A four-member Pakistani delegation, headed by Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf, has requested the World Bank to act as a guarantor in the Kishanganga Dam issue.

The delegation, which arrived in Washington, DC earlier this week, apprised World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and other representatives of India’s repeated violations of Indus Water Treaty.

According to a World Bank spokesperson, “The Indus Waters Treaty is a profoundly important international agreement that provides an essential cooperative framework for India and Pakistan to address current and future challenges of effective water management to meet human needs and achieve development goals.

“The meetings are discussing concerns raised by the Pakistan delegation and opportunities within the treaty to seek an amicable resolution.”

The meeting come in the wake of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration of the Kishanganga Dam project last Saturday, amid protests from Pakistan.

Pakistan maintains that the project on a river flowing downstream into its territory will disrupt water supplies.

The 330MW Kishanganga hydropower station, work on which had started in 2009, is one of the projects that India has fast-tracked in the volatile state amid frosty ties between nuclear-armed countries.

Pakistan has maintained that these projects violate the World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries upon which 80 percent of its irrigated agriculture of the country depends.

“Pakistan is seriously concerned about the inauguration (of the Kishanganga plant),” a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry said on Friday. “Pakistan believes that the inauguration of the project without the resolution of the dispute is tantamount to violation of the Indus Waters Treaty.”

The Kishanganga project was delayed for several years as Pakistan took India to the International Court of Arbitration, which ruled in the latter’s favour in 2013. India has said that the hydropower projects underway in Jammu and Kashmir are “run-of-the-river” schemes that use the river’s flow and elevation to generate electricity rather than large reservoirs, and do not contravene the treaty.

On Sunday, Pakistan Ambassador to the United States Aizaz Chaudhry had remarked that Pakistan intended to consult with the World Bank on the Kishanganga Dam issue. Speaking in the context of issues, Chaudhry said the country intended to take up plans of Indus Waters Treaty, Kishanganga Dam, and Ratle Hydroelectric Plant with World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

Published in Daily Times, May 24^th 2018.