While India’s Minister of External Affairs is the guest of honour at the inaugural plenary of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference at Abu Dhabi, UAE, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan has been forced into not attending the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers.
It has issued a statement where it has expressed its great displeasure towards India’s attendance at the event.
In its statement, Pakistan said, “India is a country with unresolved disputes with Pakistan, a founding member of OIC. India is also responsible for horrendous human rights violations of people of Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir. India has consistently rejected OIC resolution on the Jammu & Kashmir dispute, adopted at the OIC Foreign Ministers and Summit levels. Only last year, India rejected the OIC resolutions on Jammu & Kashmir by stating that “India dismisses it with the contempt it deserves.”
Expressing its objections on India’s attendance of the event, the statement said that India has “No legal or moral grounds to be present at the meeting.” “Pakistan’s strong objections in this regard have been clearly communicated,” it added.
It appears other members of the OIC do not care much about Pakistan’s objections on the matter. “Aggression has been done against a founding member of the OIC,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had said on Tuesday while asserting that Pakistan has “expressed reservations” about the invitation to India.
Despite the objections raised by Pakistan, India did attend the conference today where External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj targeted Pakistan over its support to terrorists. She urged the OIC to urge states indulging in Terror activities to dismantle their networks, and stop financing and harboring elements that pose a grave security threat for the region.
Pakistan’s objection being denied at the OIC and India getting a chance to address the member nations is not only symbolic of Pakistan’s continued geopolitical isolation but is also a glimpse of how India’s increasing importance in the world map has made it stand tall globally.
Pakistan could have made progress on ending LeT & JeM ability to operate in 2008, or 2016, or even 2017 after FATF.
Today, 18 years after JeM was listed, Pakistan’s failure to adjust to the altered strategic context means an Indian FM is at OIC & Pakistan is boycotting.
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— Mosharraf Zaidi (@mosharrafzaidi) March 1, 2019
It appears that the international pressure Narendra Modi has built on Pakistan through diplomacy is starting to yield results. After it was forced to return Wing Commander Abhinandan unconditionally, Pakistan has been successfully isolated even in an international organization it is a founding member of.
