ISLAMABAD: Pakistan warned the world community on Monday that multilateralism was “in peril” amid rising global tensions, urging major powers to revive diplomacy and dialogue to prevent a further breakdown in international security.
Speaking at a UN Security Council briefing, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, said the world was drifting toward confrontation at a time when cooperative mechanisms were weakening.
His comments came during a session addressed by Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen, chairing the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security body.
Formed out of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE was designed during the Cold War to reduce tensions, uphold principles of sovereignty and human rights and promote mechanisms for peaceful dispute resolution.
“Today, the foundational ethos of international relations, multilateralism, cooperation and indivisible security, as envisaged in the preamble of Helsinki Final Act, is perhaps facing its biggest challenge in decades,” Ahmed said. “The OSCE, too, is navigating a difficult geopolitical landscape, with conflict raging in the heart of Europe for nearly four years, depletion of trust and unprecedented strains on peaceful co-existence.”
He said a return to the “Helsinki spirit” of dialogue, confidence-building and cooperative security was urgently needed, not only in Europe but globally.
“This is not a matter of choice but a strategic imperative to lower tensions, rebuild essential channels of communication, and demonstrate that comprehensive security is best preserved through cooperative instruments, and not by the pursuit of hegemony and domination through military means,” he said. “Objective, inclusive, impartial, and principle-based approaches are indispensable for success.”
Ahmed’s statement came in a year when Pakistan itself fought a brief but intense war after India launched missile strikes at its city in May following a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the assault, an allegation Islamabad denied while calling for a transparent international investigation.
The Pakistani diplomat said the international system was increasingly defined by bloc politics, mistrust and militarization, warning that such trends undermine both regional stability and the authority of multilateral institutions, including the UN itself.
He urged member states to invest more in preventive diplomacy and the peaceful settlement of disputes as reaffirmed by the Council in Resolution 2788.
Ahmad said Pakistan hoped the OSCE would continue reinforcing models of cooperative security and that the Security Council would back partnerships that strengthen international law and the credibility of multilateral frameworks.
The path forward, he added, required “choosing cooperation over confrontation, dialogue over division, and inclusive security over bloc-based divides.”
