SRINAGAR: Separatist leaders in Kashmir have voiced concern over the Ministry of External Affairs ordering the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan to close its office in the national capital with moderate Hurriyat Conference leader and cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq saying on Friday that Kashmiris would donate money, if the world body has issues with funds, to run its office in Delhi.
“India was finding reasons to change the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir on international level by sometimes terming the UN resolutions on Kashmir as ineffective or by questioning the very presence of the UN office,” Mirwaiz said on Friday.
By asking the UNMOGIP office at New Delhi to shift its office, he said, India was contradicting the ground and historical realities. “If the UN has issues with funds to run its office in Delhi, Kashmiris would be benevolent enough to donate the money so as to compensate that problem,” the moderate separatist leader said.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin had on July 8 said the Central government had asked the UNMOGIP to vacate the government bungalow on Purana Qila Road which they have been occupying free of charge.
Slamming the government, JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik said it was India that went to the UN for intervention in Jammu & Kashmir and pledged to provide the people a chance to decide their future.
A spokesman of Hurriyat hardeliner Syed Ali Geelani said closing the UN office in New Delhi could neither change the status of Kashmir issue nor solve it.
The first team of UNMOGIP arrived in Jammu and Kashmir in January 1949 to supervise the ceasefire between India and Pakistan; and to assist the Military Adviser to the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP).