Unresolved issues put UN credibility at stake, says Maleeha

NEW YORK: The long-standing Kashmir and Palestine issues have put the credibility of the United Nations at stake, says Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi.

Speaking in a debate on the Middle East, she said people’s faith in the world body was withering away owing to non-implementation of UN Security Council’s resolutions on key issues.

Ms Lodhi renewed Pakistan’s pledge to keep supporting Kashmiris and Palestinians in their struggle for rights. International community must lend a helping hand to Palestinian refugees, she demanded.

The ambassador stressed that peace in the Middle East was linked to just and fair resolutions of the issues and lamented efforts to restore peace in the region were fading away.

Earlier, she had told a UN committee that there can be no lasting peace in the Middle East without a just solution to the Palestinian issue.

“A viable, independent and contiguous State of Palestine on the basis of the internationally agreed parameters, the pre-1967 borders and Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, is the only sustainable guarantee for enduring peace in the Middle East,” the ambassador had said.

She deplored Israel’s escalation of settlement building in the occupied territories as a blow to the peace process.