NEW DELHI: India has asked a United Nations military observer group on Kashmir to vacate a government-provided bungalow in New Delhi, in a toughening stance against a mission that Indians have long opposed.
New Delhi considers the whole of Kashmir as an integral part of the country and has bristled against external involvement in the region including the UN Military Observers Group on India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) that was set up in 1949 after their first war. The Indian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday the government had asked UNMOGIP to hand over the Delhi premises from where it was running a liaison office for more than four decades for free as part of efforts to rationalize the mission’s presence in India.
The small UN mission has its main offices in the Kashmir capital Srinagar on the Indian side and in the Pakistani capital Islamabad as part of a UN Security Council resolution to supervise the cease-fire in the divided region. New Delhi has argued that the UN had little role to play after India and Pakistan signed the Simla Pact in 1972 under which the two countries agreed to resolve all disputes including Kashmir bilaterally. Pakistan, however, has frequently called for third-party involvement to settle the dispute in Kashmir.
“We have said that as far as we are concerned the UNMOGIP has outlived its relevance. This is a consistent stance that we have articulated on several occasions,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told reporters after the Indian Express reported the notice given to the U.N. group to leave the Delhi premises.
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