SRINAGAR : Congress termed India’s participation in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) a “diplomatic faux pas” and said that the only “diplomatic achievement” of the Modi government and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj was OIC’s resolution on Kashmir, which labelled India as a “terrorist state”.
Rubbishing Modi government’s claims that OIC extending an invite to India to attend its plenary was a “diplomatic success”, the party said same meeting also resulted in 57 participating nations grouping together to adopt a resolution that “supported” Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
Condemning “the sell out of the national interest by the NDA-BJP Government” in the OIC meeting in Abu Dhabi, Tewari also alleged that the Modi government was attempting to down play the OIC resolution on Kashmir. “We cannot even call it a snub. It is more than a snub; it’s a slap on the face,” he said, adding that the MEA had issued a statement reaffirming its stand on Jammu and Kashmir after the resolution was passed.
“There could not have been a greater and a more abject surrender of India’s national interests than the external affairs minister providing legitimacy to the OIC by her presence and getting a resolution in return, which labels India as a terrorist state and occupier in Jammu and Kashmir,” party spokesperson Manish Tewari said.
In its Kashmir resolution, the OIC said it “condemns in the strongest possible terms recent wave of Indian terrorism in occupied Jammu and Kashmir that have resulted in the deaths of 48 people in the month of November alone making 2018 one of the deadliest years in the history of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, in more than a decade with over 450 casualties”.
The OIC resolution also said it “deplores the brutal sexual assault against an eight-year old Muslim girl Asifa, and denounces the recurring use of rape as a tool of war against the Kashmiris.” (PTK)
