ISLAMABAD, July 2: Pakistan on Thursday rejected the alleged Indian effort to control rivers by treating water as a “strategic asset,” especially in the case of the Indus basin.
Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi’s comments during his weekly press briefing were in response to a question about India’s decision to put the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in “abeyance.” India took a series of punitive measures against Pakistan a day after last year’s Pahalgam terror attack on April 22. One of the major steps was putting in “abeyance” the 1960 vintage IWT, which has governed the distribution and use of the Indus river and its tributaries since then.
Andrabi said that Pakistan rejected “India’s attempt to invoke baseless allegations of terrorism as a pretext for placing the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance and obstructing the lawful flow of the Pakistani share.”
“Let this be very clear: the real issue is not terrorism. The real issue is the growing disposition within the Indian leadership to treat a shared international river system as a strategic asset that can be controlled, withheld or diverted at will,” he alleged.
Andrabi said that water is not a tool of coercion or political pressure and any attempt to deny Pakistan its legitimate share of water under the IWT constituted a clear violation of the international legal obligations undertaken by India.
Under the IWT, brokered by the World Bank, Pakistan received the entire flows from the three western rivers, Chenab, Jhelum and Indus, while India had complete rights over the three eastern rivers, Sutlej, Beas and Ravi.
The spokesman also mentioned a seminar titled “International Seminar on Indus Waters Treaty: An Instrument of Peace and Regional Stability” held in Islamabad on Tuesday, and reminded how different participants supported the IWT and “rejected weaponisation of water.”
Andrabi also quoted Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar as saying at the seminar that the IWT could not be suspended or terminated under any pretext and that the abeyance by India was “illegal, unilateral and without any basis.”
When asked if the seminar would help Pakistan from becoming a barren land, Andrabi said: “No country can do that. Not India, not any other country has the power to do that.” (PTI)
