ISLAMABAD: India said on Friday it had conveyed its objection to the United States about the US ambassador in Pakistan’s recent visit to the Pakistani side of Kashmir, known as Azad Kashmir, that India considers its own.
The objections have been raised over a recent visit by US ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome to Azad Kashmir, the part of the Himalayan valley administered by Pakistan.
India’s objection is to Blome referring to the region as Azad Kashmir, while India considers it occupied by Pakistan.
The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir has been at the heart of more than 70 years of animosity, since the partition of the British colony of India into the separate countries of Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India.
The scenic mountain region is divided between India and Pakistan, who rule it in part but claim it in full.
“Our objection to the visit and meetings in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir by the US ambassador to Pakistan has been conveyed to the US side,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told a news briefing.
On October 2, the US embassy posted a series of tweets about Blome’s visit:
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also made a rare visit by a US lawmaker to Azad Kashmir in April and said the issue should get more attention from the United States, prompting an angry response from India.
“I don’t believe that it (Kashmir) is being talked about to the extent it needs to in Congress but also with the administration,” Omar told reporters after visiting the de facto border dividing the disputed territory between Pakistan and India.
Earlier that month she had questioned what she called the reluctance of the US government to criticize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on human rights.
Days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of New Delhi’s rights record.
India has long faced allegations of rights abuses in its portion of the territory, charges New Delhi denies.
