Letter dated 30 July 1958 from the representative of Pakistan Aly Khan to the President of the Security Council.
Letter dated 30 July 1958 from the representative of Pakistan Aly Khan to the President of the Security Council.
I am instructed to refer to the letter addressed to you by the representative of India and circulated as document S/4042 dated 7 July 1958.
My Government trusts that the Security Council will note the inability of the permanent representative of India to disprove the charge of misrepresentation to which he exposed himself by wilfully altering press reports, adduced as evidence in his letter of 11 June 1958 [3/4024]. It is clear that he has chosen to justify only two of the many examples of misrepresentation which were pointed out by my delegation. My Government would leave it to the fair judgement of the Security Council to decide whether or not his pleas are legitimate and worthy of a Member of the United Nations.
As regards the distortion pointed out by us in paragraph 3 of our letter of June 1958 [S/4032], the permanent representative of India pleads the right of what he calls "composite quotation" [S/4042 para 2]. The actual "composite quotation", which he is thus trying to justify, involved the joining together of two sentences by two different authors in two different contexts, the suppression of part of one of these sentences and the concealment and perversion of the sense of the original. The question, therefore, is not difficult to decide whether such "composite quotation" is permissible and in conformity with the dignity of the United Nations.
As regards the distortion pointed out by my delegation in paragraph 5 of our letter of 19 June 1958, the permanent representative of India pleads "typographical error". Here again my Government is confident that a careful reading of his letter of 11 June 1958 will reveal that the insertion of the parenthetical phrase in the quotation was meaningful and could only be deliberate. The correction now suggested by him (paragraph 4 of his letter of July) would make this insertion-"Sheikh Abdullah' followers", referring to "his private army"-not only redundant, but completely pointless.
In order to escape the onus of proof which our letter of 19 June 1958 placed on him, the permanent representative of India has tried to question the authenticity of the photostat submitted by us with that letter. I am, therefore, enclosing the original newspaper. The Daily Telegraph, 4 a m. edition of Friday, 2 May 1958-which, I am certain, will remove all doubts about our scrupulous adherence to the text in every detail. An inspection of the original will reveal that our letter did not attribute any words to the so-called Prime Minister of Indian-occupied Kashmir which he had not been publicly quoted as having uttered and also that we did not suppress any portion of the dispatch in question. The original newspaper title, mast-head and all-falsifies every one of the assertions which the permanent representative of India has laboriously made in paragraphs 6 and 7 of his letter of 6 July 1958.
It is necessary to recall here that my Government attached importance to the contents of the letter of the permanent representative of India dated 11 June 1958 only for the reason that they showed his startling techniques of misleading the Security Council in particular and world opinion in general. My Government deeply regrets that, instead of straightforwardly admitting errors, the permanent representative of India is persisting in them. The spectacle is not heartening for any Member of the United Nations that a fellow Member should permit itself to adopt the practices which India's representatives have employed in the course of this correspondence and on other occasions before the Security Council.
In paragraph 8 of his letter of 6 July 1958, the permanent representative of India has made several statements which are baseless and highly provocative. In the face of the obligations arising from the resolutions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, duly accepted by both parties and thus constituting an international agreement between India and Pakistan with regard to Kashmir, the invocation of Article 2, paragraph 7, of the United Nations Charter reflects not only an aggressive colonialist position but, in this context, a positively frivolous attitude. The belated assertion now being repeated ad nauseam, that Jammu and Kashmir is a constituent state of the Indian Union and thus a matter of India's domestic jurisdiction is contradicted by statements which are on record as having been made by the Prime Minister of India himself. Further-more, I must mention here that is a basic rule of international law that no State shall advance the provisions of its domestic constitution as a reason for its failure public to discharge any obligations arising from an international treaty or agreement. These assertions of the permanent representative of India, therefore bring into grave question his Government's compliance with the rules and norms of international behaviour and its ability and willingness to discharge the obligations under the Charter of the United nations, with reference particularly to Articles 2 paragraphs 2 and 3, Article 4, paragraph I and Article 25 thereof. I must emphasize here that the defiance of the authority of the United Nations which these assertions indicate assumes a particularly grave character at a time when my Government is confronted with critical issues with regard to the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, With a view to assisting the Security Council in the appreciation of this situation, I am instructed to recall here the letters of 25 June 1958 [S/4036] and 15 July 1958 [S4048] addressed by this delegation to you.
I request that this communication be circulated as a Security Council document and brought to the notice of the members of the Security Council.
(Signed) Aly KHAN
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,
Permanent Representative of Pakistan
to the United Nations
(Source: UN Document no. S/4070)