UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed a veteran Uruguayan Army official as head of the United Nations mission tasked with monitoring the ceasefire line between India and Pakistan.
Major General José Eladio Alcain of Uruguay will be Head of Mission and Chief Military Observer for the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).
He will succeed Major General Per Gustaf Lodin of Sweden, who will complete his two-year assignment this month.
According to a statement from the UN spokesperson's office, Alcain has had a distinguished career with the Uruguayan Army since 1977.
Most recently, he held the position of Director of the National Health Service of the Armed Forces (2015-2018).
Prior to this, he served as Third Mechanized Cavalry Brigade Commander and as Director of the Architecture and Engineering Section of the National Health Service of the Armed Forces (2012-2013).
He also worked as an instructor at the Uruguayan Peacekeeping Training Centre (2000-2017) and the Uruguayan War College (2003-2018).
UNMOGIP was established in January 1949.
The first team of unarmed military observers, who eventually formed the nucleus of UNMOGIP, arrived in the mission area in January 1949 to supervise, in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, and to assist the Military Adviser to the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), established in 1948 by Security Council resolutions 39 and 47.
Following the India-Pakistan war in 1971 and a subsequent ceasefire agreement of 17 December of that year, the tasks of UNMOGIP have been to observe, to the extent possible, developments pertaining to the strict observance of the ceasefire of 17 December 1971 and to report thereon to the Secretary-General.
India has maintained that UNMOGIP has outlived its utility and is irrelevant after the Simla Agreement and the consequent establishment of the Line of Control (LoC).
Given the disagreement between India and Pakistan about UNMOGIP's mandate and functions, the Secretary-General's position has been that UNMOGIP can only be terminated by a decision of the Security Council.
In the absence of such a decision, UNMOGIP has been maintained with those same arrangements since then.