British envoy visits PoK, India must call off FTA
Visit of Jane Marriott, the British High Commissioner in Islamabad, to areas of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is certainly an infringement of Indian Sovereignty. Terming the visit as “highly objectionable”, India has registered a ‘strong protest’ with the British High Commissioner in India.
This comes when our Raksha Mantri was visiting London. In fact Jane Marriott the British envoy visited Mirpur city in the PoK region along with another official of the UK Foreign Office. How would the Britts have reacted, in case Rajnath Singh while in London had expressed his wish to visit British Occupied Scotland or British Occupied Northern Ireland ?
“India has taken a serious note of the highly objectionable visit of the British High Commissioner in Islamabad, along with a UK Foreign Office official, to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on 10 January 2024,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Saturday.
“Such infringement of India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is unacceptable,” it added.
Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra has lodged a strong protest with the British High Commissioner in India on this ‘infringement’. The Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh “have been and shall always remain an integral part of India,” MEA added.
The British had started this game in 1947 and seem to becintinuing it. However now India can add concluding touches to this game. Meanwhile the FTA talks with UK should be dragged on if not called off permanently. India must have minimum ties with countries which do not respect our Sovereignty.
In October last year, the US envoy to Pakistan, Donald Blome, had visited the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir region. New Delhi conveyed to Washington its ‘strong objection’ to the visit and urged the international community to respect its “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
