NEW DELHI: India reiterated Friday that Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) will be held in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.The ministry of external affairs said India’s position on the treaty is consistent.“The IWT stands in abeyance in response to Pakistan’s continued sponsorship of cross-border terrorism. Pakistan must credibly and irrevocably abjure support for cross-border terrorism,” said spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.Following last year’s Pahalgam attack, India put in abeyance the 1960 IWT, saying blood and water can’t flow together.The remarks followed Pakistan’s rejection this week of alleged Indian effort to control rivers by treating water as a “strategic asset”. Foreign office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said Pakistan rejected “India’s attempt to invoke baseless allegations of terrorism as a pretext for placing IWT in abeyance and obstructing the lawful flow of the Pakistani share.”
‘Weaponisation of water,’ says Pakistan foreign minister
Foreign office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi alleged, “Let this be very clear: the real issue is not terrorism. The real issue is the growing disposition within the Indian leadership to treat a shared international river system as a strategic asset that can be controlled, withheld or diverted at will,”The World Bank-brokered IWT allocates the eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej) to India and the western rivers (Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum) to Pakistan, with some provisions for India to use the western rivers for limited irrigation and non-consumptive uses like power generation.Speaking at an “international seminar” on IWT Wednesday, Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar said India’s stand amounted to “weaponisation of water” and could have serious implications for regional peace and security.The seminar was also addressed by PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto who likened India’s decision to pause the IWT to blocking of Strait of Hormuz.MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal’s assertion that the talks with Pakistan cannot resume until it stopped supporting terrorism also marked a repudiation of the appeal by “prominent” citizens from India and Pakistan, to start bilateral talks.The group included former CM of Jammu & Kashmir Farooq Abdullah, former R&AW chief A S Dulat and Humayun Kabir, West Bengal MLA who generated a controversy by seeking to construct a replica of the now-demolished Babri Masjid.
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