Hours before India and Pakistan issued the joint statement announcing strict observance of the 2003 ceasefire agreement, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN Munir Akram conveyed a message to UNSC reminding that the UN charter doesn’t allow the use of force to prevent ‘future’ and ‘anticipatory attacks.’ 

“Unfortunately, today the resort to unauthorized and unilateral use of force is most visible ... in foreign occupation and intervention; in denial of the right of self-determination and in the coercion of smaller and weaker States,” Akram was quoted as saying by Dawn.

In a veiled reference to Afghanistan and India, he said Pakistan “faces cross border attacks by terrorist groups from the territory of the neighboring state supported by a third state”. Pakistan has respected the territorial sovereignty of its neighboring states but we have the right to self-defense against the state which is sponsoring these terrorist attacks against Pakistan, he said in his briefing to the UNSC.

Elaborating Pakistan’s Kashmir policy, he said Pakistan has the right to self-defense and upholding the right to self-determination for the people of held Kashmir. 

Akram also defended the insurgency and terrorism in Kashmir, and said, “The struggle of peoples for self-determination cannot be equated with terrorism. " 

He further added, "Peoples whose right to self-determination has been recognized and which is being forcibly suppressed, have the right, under the Charter and the resolutions of the UN General Assembly, to resort to all possible means, including an armed struggle to secure their right to self-determination.”  

He also said the region had witnessed the worst form of violation of the UN resolution.