It’s India’s patience to adhere for 65 years: Foreign Secy Vikram Misri on Indus Water Treaty

New Delhi [India], May 8 (ANI): Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on Thursday highlighted that Pakistan had repeatedly violated Indus Water Treaty by deliberately creating “legal roadblocks" over the years and said that It is India’s patience that India was “adhering to the treaty for the last 65 years."

Addressing the press briefing, Misri said that India was constantly trying to negotiate to discuss the modification on the treaty.

“For the last 2.5 years, India has been in communication with the Government of Pakistan. We have sent several notices to them requesting negotiations to discuss the modification of the treaty. India has been honouring the treaty for more than six decades, even during the period when Pakistan imposed multiple wars on us. Pakistan has been the one acting in violation of the treaty, deliberately creating legal roadblocks in India, exercising its legitimate rights on the Western rivers… It is India’s patience that we were adhering to the treaty for the last 65 years, even after so many provocations," Vikram Misri said.

Misri noted that there has been demographic changes, climate changes, terrorism and other factors that has “hampered India’s ability to exercise its rights under the treaty."

“There are demographic changes, there are climate changes that have taken place, there is the imperative of clean energy, and of course the terrorism that Pakistan has wreaked in the state of Jammu and Kashmir itself has hampered India’s ability to exercise its rights under the treaty," Misri said.

Misri noted Pakistan’s constant “refusal to respond to our request" has been another factor to put the treaty in abeyance.

“Pakistan’s persistent refusal to respond to our request to enter into government-to-government negotiations on the modification of the treaty is in a sense itself a violation of the treaty. And therefore India has taken the step of putting the treaty in abeyance until Pakistan abjures irrevocably its support," Misri said.

India decided to hold the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism after the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people were killed.

The Treaty allocates the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan and the Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India. At the same time, the Treaty allows each country certain uses of the rivers allocated to the other. The treaty gives India 20 per cent of the water from the Indus River System and the rest 80 per cent to Pakistan. (ANI)

(The story has come from a syndicated feed and has not been edited by the Tribune Staff.)

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