Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) has warned that any attempt to block water flows to the country could amount to an act of war, after India’s water minister said not a single drop of water would be allowed to reach Pakistan in the coming years.
Indian Minister of Water CR Patil made the remarks while speaking to journalists, saying India was working on it following directives from Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi.
FO spokesperson Tahir Andrabi, speaking at his weekly media briefing on Thursday, said that any attempt to block or substantially curtail water vital to the livelihood, agriculture and wellbeing of over 250 million Pakistanis would be a deeply irresponsible act.
“Any such act would be treated with utmost seriousness and could possibly amount to an act of war under Article 51 of the UN Charter,” Andrabi told reporters.
He noted that states retained the right of self-defence under the same article of the UN Charter, and urged India to honour its international commitments while avoiding actions that could further destabilise the region.
Andrabi also pushed back against remarks by India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), saying India had no credibility to speak on the rights of Kashmiris while denying the people of Indian Illegally-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) their right to self-determination.
“It is untenable for a state like India, which has consistently denied the people of Jammu and Kashmir their right to self-determination, to claim concerns over the rights of Kashmiris,” he said.
The FO spokesperson also rejected what he described as New Delhi’s attempts to draw a false equivalence between the situation in AJK and IIOJK, maintaining that issues in AJK were being addressed through a democratic and constitutional framework while the Kashmir dispute remained internationally unresolved.
