India at UNGA slams Pakistan for making false accusation

In a hard-hitting response to Pakistan, India has said in the UNGA that a country which claims to seek peace with its neighbours would neither sponsor cross-border terrorism nor would it shelter planners of the horrific Mumbai terrorist attack of November 26, 2008.

"It is regrettable that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has chosen the platform of this august assembly to make false accusations against India," Mijito Vinito, India's first secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the UN said as India exercised the Right of Reply in the UNGA on Friday to respond sharply to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif who had raked up the issue of Jammu and Kashmir during his address to the debate earlier in the day, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

The Indian diplomat said "He (Sharif) has done so to obfuscate misdeeds in his own country and to justify actions against India that the world considers unacceptable."

In his address, Sharif reiterated that Pakistan wants to have peace with all its neighbours, including India but added that long-lasting, enduring peace can only be "insured and guaranteed" through a just and fair solution to the issue of Kashmir under the UN Charter and Security Council resolutions.

India responded by saying a "polity that claims it seeks peace with its neighbours would never sponsor cross-border terrorism nor would it shelter planners of the horrific Mumbai terrorist attack, disclosing their existence only under pressure from the international community."

The Mumbai terror strikes by ten terrorists, who came from Pakistan, on November 26, 2008, left 175 people, including a number of foreigners, dead in India's financial capital.

In a clear reference to Pakistan, Vinito said "the desire for peace, security and progress in the Indian subcontinent will surely happen when cross-border terrorism ceases, when governments come clean with the international community and their own people, when minorities are not persecuted and, not least, when we recognize these realities before this Assembly."