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Pakistan allows UN rights team to visit Pakistan-controlled Kashmir

Xinhua, August 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

Pakistan said Thursday it allows the UN to send a team to its part of Kashmir, days after India turned down request by the UN rights council to travel to the Indian-controlled Kashmir to investigate the alleged rights violations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC) Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein to "end the persistent and egregious violation of the basic human rights of the Kashmiri people."

The Indian media had reported that a meeting of all political parties in India presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week dismissed the UNHRC's request to visit Kashmir.

But Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said his country has no objection if the UN wants to send any team.

Paksitan welcomes "any UN team that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights may wish to send to AJK (Azad Jammu and Kashmir)" Zakaria told a weekly news briefing.

The spokesman said Pakistan-controlled Kashmir is an area open to everyone and is frequented by foreign tourists and members of the diplomatic community in Pakistan, including representatives of the United Nations, where they have observed recent elections and met cross section of people.

Dozens of people have been reportedly killed and many injured in violence in the Indian-administered Kashmir after the last month's killing of a top militant commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen group.

The spokesman said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will raise the Kashmir issue at the United Nations General Assembly's session in New York next month.

"The prime minister is going to take this issue very forcefully at the UN platform," Zakaria said, describing Kashmir as the "internationally recognized dispute." Endit