I would like to take this opportunity to formally welcome you to the United Nations General Assembly

Transcription

1 Dear Delegates, I would like to take this opportunity to formally welcome you to the United Nations General Assembly On my behalf, I assure you that I will try my best to make this conference an experience worth remembering. I am assisted by two Vice Chairs namely Mr. Nitish Dagar and Mr. Jibraan who will help me in doing so. We will try and give you the best debate possible on the given agenda. I would like to give you few pointers beforehand which should help you in the coming days. Firstly, please do not be intimidated by the executive board or any other delegate. We, the executive board are there to moderate the debate and other delegates are there to contribute to same. So come forward and speak up if you have anything to contribute to debate. Secondly, the background guide is just the starting point of your research - not the end. It is just the tip of the iceberg. Research much more because at the end of the day it is the research which earns you that coveted award and above all respect of the delegates. Thirdly, maintain decorum at all times - follow Rules of Procedure and be diplomatic. It goes without saying that we are the ambassadors of our respective countries, therefore be at your best during the whole time. Fourthly, be honest during feedback sessions. I shall be asking for feedback at the end of each day. This is where you need to tell me where we as the executive board can improve. I understand the fact that the committee will have a lot of first timers. So please speak up. I am looking forward to good debate and some fun as well. Cheers Regards Kunal Mishra Chairperson

2 COMMITTEE: UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY The General Assembly, largest United Nations Principal organ, was established in the year 1945 under the charter of the UN. The General Assembly is the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations. As one of the six principal organs of the UN, the General Assembly is the only organ which has equal representation. Provisions relating to General Assembly are contained in chapter IV of the UN Charter comprising of Articles 9 to 22. There are currently 193 Members who have signed and ratified the UN Charter. The important function of the General Assembly would include considering and making recommendations with respect to better international cooperation and maintaining of international peace and security; discussing any matter relating to international peace and security, except those which are at that moment being discussed by the Security council; deliberating on issues which are recommended by the UN Security council to the General Assembly; making recommendations to promote international political cooperation and for the development and codification of international law, the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and international collaboration in the economic, social, humanitarian, cultural, educational and health fields; mediating and trying to settle the disputes peacefully to avoid any sort of dirt in the friendly relationships between nations; receiving reports from the UN Security council and other organs of the UN; considering and approving the United Nations budget and establishing the financial assessments of Member States; electing the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, the members for the other UN organs and councils and take recommendations from the UN Security Council for the appointment of the UN Secretary General. c.f :

3 AGENDA: The issue of sovereignty with a special emphasis on Indo-Pak relations 1. Sovereignty The definition of Sovereignty in legal terms goes as follows: The supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which an independent state is governed and from which all specific political powers are derived; the intentional independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign interference. Sovereignty is the power of a state to do everything necessary to govern itself, such as making, executing, and applying laws; imposing and collecting taxes; making war and peace; and forming treaties or engaging in commerce with foreign nations. The individual states of the United States do not possess the powers of external sovereignty, such as the right to deport undesirable persons, but each does have certain attributes of internal sovereignty, such as the power to regulate the acquisition and transfer of property within its borders. The sovereignty of a state is determined with reference to the U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. It is also defined in the following way: The union and exercise of all human power possessed in a state; it is a combination of all power; it is the power to do everything in a state without accountability; to make laws, to execute and to apply them: to impose and collect taxes, and, levy, contributions; to make war or peace; to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like. 1. Abstractedly, sovereignty resides in the body of the nation and belongs to the people. But these powers are generally exercised by delegation. 2. When analyzed, sovereignty is naturally divided into three great powers; namely, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary; the first is the power to make new laws, and to correct and repeal the old; the second is the power to execute the laws both at home and abroad; and the last is the power to apply the laws to particular facts; to judge the disputes which arise among the citizens, and to punish crimes. 3. Strictly speaking, in our republican forms of government, the absolute sovereignty of the nation is in the people of the nation; and the residuary sovereignty of each state, not granted to any of its public functionaries, is in the people of the state. c.f: legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sovereignty

4 THE SEEDS OF THE PROBLEM- JUNAGARH Junagadh was a state on the southwestern end of Gujarat, with the principalities of Manavadar, Mangrol and Babriawad. It was not contiguous to Pakistan and other states physically separated it from Pakistan. The state had an overwhelming Hindu population which constituted more than 80% of its citizens, while the ruler of the state was a Muslim. Nawab of Junagadh, Mahabat Khan, acceded to Pakistan on 15 August Pakistan confirmed the acceptance of the accession on 15 September India did not accept the accession as legitimate. The Indian point of view was that Junagadh was not contiguous to Pakistan and that the Hindu majority of Junagadh wanted it to be a part of India and that the state was had Indian territory on three sides. While the ruler of Junagadh claimed a border with Pakistan by sea. The Pakistani point of view was that since Junagadh had a ruler and governing body who chose to accede to Pakistan, they should be allowed to do so. Junagadh, having a coastline, could have maintained maritime links with Pakistan. Neither of the states was able to resolve this issue amicably and it only added fuel to an already charged environment. Sardar Patel, India's then Home Minister, felt that if Junagadh was permitted to go to Pakistan, it would create communal unrest across Gujarat. The government of India gave Pakistan time to void the accession and hold a plebiscite in Junagadh to pre empt any violence in Gujarat. Samaldas Gandhi formed a government-in-exile, the Arzi Hukumat of the people of Junagadh. Patel ordered the annexation of Junagadh's three principalities. India cut off supplies of fuel and coal to Junagadh, severed air and postal links, sent troops to the frontier, and occupied the principalities of Mangrol and Babariawad that had acceded to India.[5] On 26 October, Nawab of Junagadh and his family fled to Pakistan following clashes with Indian troops. On 7 November, Junagadh's court, facing collapse, invited the Government of India to take over the State's administration. The Dewan of Junagadh, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, the father of the more famous Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, decided to invite the Government of India to intervene and wrote a letter to Mr. Buch, the Regional Commissioner of Saurashtra in the Government of India to this effect.[6] The Government of Pakistan protested. The government of India rejected the protests of Pakistan and accepted the invitation of the Dewan to intervene.[7] Indian troops occupied Junagadh on 9 November In February 1948, a plebiscite held almost unanimously voted for accession to India. THE KASHMIR PROBLEM The most difficult problem in relations between India and Pakistan since partition in August 1947 has been their dispute over Kashmir. Pakistan's leaders did not accept the legality of the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to India, and undeclared war broke out in October It was the first of three conflicts between the two countries. Pakistan's representatives ever since have argued that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to exercise their right to self-determination through a plebiscite, as promised by Nehru and required by UN Security Council resolutions in 1948 and The inconclusive fighting led to a UN-arranged cease-fire starting on January 1, On July 18, 1949, the two sides signed the Karachi Agreement establishing a cease-fire line that was to be supervised by the UN. The demarcation left Srinagar and almost 139,000 square kilometers under Indian control and 83,807 square kilometers under Pakistani control. Of these two areas, China

5 occupied 37,555 square kilometers in India's Ladakh District (part of which is known as Aksai Chin) in 1962 and Pakistan ceded, in effect, 5,180 square kilometers in the Karakoram area to China when the two countries demarcated their common border in , leaving India with 101,387 square kilometers and Pakistan with 78,387 square kilometers. Starting in January 1949, and still in place in 1995, the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan was tasked with supervising the ceasefire in Kashmir. The group comprises thirty-eight observers--from Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Uruguay--who rotate their headquarters every six months between Srinagar (summer) and Rawalpindi, Pakistan (winter). In 1952 the elected and overwhelmingly Muslim Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir, led by the popular Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, voted in favor of confirming accession to India. Thereafter, India regarded this vote as an adequate expression of popular will and demurred on holding a plebiscite. After 1953 Jammu and Kashmir was identified as standing for the secular, pluralistic, and democratic principles of the Indian polity. Nehru refused to discuss the subject bilaterally until 1963, when India, under pressure from the United States and Britain, engaged in six rounds of secret talks with Pakistan on "Kashmir and other related issues." These negotiations failed, as did the 1964 attempt at mediation made by Abdullah, who recently had been released from a long detention by the Indian government because of his objections to Indian control. Armed infiltrators from Pakistan crossed the cease-fire line, and the number of skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani troops increased in the summer of Starting on August 5, 1965, India alleged, Pakistani forces began to infiltrate the Indian-controlled portion of Jammu and Kashmir. India made a countermove in late August, and by September 1, 1965, the second conflict had fully erupted as Pakistan launched an attack across the international line of control in southwest Jammu and Kashmir. Indian forces retaliated on September 6 in Pakistan's Punjab Province and prevailed over Pakistan's apparent superiority in tanks and aircraft. A cease-fire called by the UN Security Council on September 23 was observed by both sides. At Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in January 1966, the belligerents agreed to restore the status quo ante and to resolve outstanding issues by negotiation. The third war between India and Pakistan, in December 1971, centered in the east over the secession of East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh), but it also included engagements in Kashmir and elsewhere on the India-West Pakistan front. India's military victory was complete. The independence of Bangladesh was widely interpreted in India--but not in Pakistan--as an ideological victory disproving the "Two Nations Theory" pushed by the Muslim League and that led to partition in At Shimla (Simla), Himachal Pradesh, on July 2, 1972, Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto signed the Simla Accord by which India would return all personnel and captured territory in the west and the two countries would "settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations." External bodies, including the UN, were excluded from the process. The fighting had resulted in the capture of each other's territory at various points along the cease-fire line, but the Simla Accord defined a new line of control that deviated in only minor ways from the 1949 cease-fire line. The two sides agreed not to alter the actual line of control unilaterally and promised to respect it "without prejudice to the recognized position of either side." Both sides further undertook to "refrain from the threat or use of force in violation of the line." During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jammu and Kashmir prospered under a virtually autonomous government led first by Sheikh Abdullah and then by his son Farooq Abdullah. In the summer of

6 1984, differences between Srinagar and New Delhi led to the dismissal of Farooq's government by highly questionable means. Kashmir once again became an irritant in bilateral relations. Indian diplomats consistently accused Pakistan of trying to "internationalize" the Kashmir dispute in violation of the Simla Accord. In the mid- to late 1980s, the political situation in Kashmir became increasingly unstable. In March 1986, New Delhi invoked President's Rule to remove Farooq's successor, Ghulam Mohammed Shah, as chief minister, and replace his rule with that of Governor Jagmohan, who had been appointed by the central government in In state elections held in 1987, Farooq's political party, the National Conference, forged an alliance with Rajiv Gandhi's Congress (I), which won a majority in the state elections. Farooq's government failed to deal with Kashmir's economic problems and the endemic corruption of its public institutions, providing fertile ground for militant Kashmiris who demanded either independence or association with Pakistan. A rising spiral of unrest, demonstrations, armed attacks by Kashmiri separatists, and armed suppression by Indian security forces started in 1988 and was still occurring in the mid-1990s. New Delhi charged Islamabad (Pakistan's capital) with assisting insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir, and Prime Minister V.P. Singh warned that India should be psychologically prepared for war. In Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto stated that Pakistan was willing to fight a "thousand-year war" for control of Kashmir. Under pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China to avoid a military conflict and solve their dispute under the terms of the Simla Accord, India and Pakistan backed off in May 1990 and engaged in a series of talks on confidence-building measures for the rest of the year. Tensions reached new heights in the early and mid-1990s with increasing internal unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, charges of human rights abuses, and repeated clashes between Indian paramilitary forces and Kashmiri militants, allegedly armed with Pakistani-supplied weapons. A concurrent irritant related to the Kashmir dispute was the confrontation over the Siachen Glacier near the Karakoram Pass, which is located in northeast Jammu and Kashmir. In 1984, Indian officials, citing Pakistan's "cartographic aggression" extending the line of control northeast toward the Karakoram Pass, contended that Pakistan intended to occupy the Siachen Glacier in order to stage an attack into Indian-controlled Kashmir. After New Delhi airlifted troops into the western parts of the Saltoro Mountains, Islamabad deployed troops opposite them. Both sides maintained 5,000 troops in temperatures averaging -40 C. The estimated cost for India was about 10 percent of the annual defense budget for FY After several skirmishes between the opposing troops, negotiations to resolve this confrontation began with five rounds of talks between 1986 and After a three-year hiatus because of tensions caused by the other Kashmir conflict, a sixth round of talks was held in November Some progress was made on the details of an agreement. In March 1994, Indian diplomats garnered enough support at the UN Human Rights Commission to force Pakistan to withdraw a resolution charging India with human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. The two sides were encouraged to resolve their dispute through bilateral talks. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she quickly dispatched a special emissary to assure Pakistani president General Mohammad Zia ul Haq that he could remove as many divisions as he wished from the Indian border without fear of any advantage being taken by India and suggested talks on reduction of force levels. Indian officials worked hard to prevent Zia from using the Afghan crisis as an opportunity to alter

7 the regional balance of power by acquiring advanced weapons from the United States. In addition, Indira Gandhi attempted to avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union, democratic elements in Pakistan, and the substantial anti-pakistan lobby within India. These largely secret efforts culminated in the visit of Minister of External Affairs P.V. Narasimha Rao to Pakistan in June 1981, during which time he declared publicly that India was "unequivocally committed to respect Pakistan's national unity, territorial integrity, and sovereign equality" as well as its right to obtain arms for self-defense. Despite the setback suffered when the United States and Pakistan announced a new security and military assistance program, regular meetings took place between high Indian and Pakistani officials. These meetings were institutionalized in late 1982 in the Indo-Pakistan Joint Commission, which included subcommissions for trade, economics, information, and travel. Indira Gandhi also received Zia on November 1, 1982, in New Delhi, and during their meeting they authorized their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries to proceed with talks leading to the establishment of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). In the mid- and late 1980s, India-Pakistan relations settled into a pattern of ups and downs. Despite the signing of an economic and trade agreement, little progress was made in concluding a comprehensive, long-term economic agreement to have nondiscriminatory bilateral trade. In addition, New Delhi charged Islamabad with arming and training Sikh terrorists in Punjab. The government's 1984 White Paper on the Punjab Agitation stated that India's strength, unity, and secularism were targets of attack. The December 1985 visit of Zia to India, during which both sides agreed not to attack each other's nuclear facilities, ushered in a brief phase of cordiality, in which another agreement expanding trade was signed. The cordiality evaporated in early 1986, with further Indian unhappiness over Pakistan's alleged interference in Punjab and the bungled Pakistani handling of the terrorist seizure of a Pan American airliner in which many Indians died. For its part, Pakistan was disturbed by anti-muslim riots in India, and Zia accused India of assisting the political campaign of Benazir Bhutto. Between November 1986 and February 1987, first India, then Pakistan, conducted provocative military maneuvers along their border that raised tensions considerably. India's "Operation Brass Tacks" took place in Rajasthan, across from Pakistan's troubled Sindh Province, and Pakistan's maneuvers were located close to India's state of Punjab. The crisis atmosphere was heightened when Pakistan's premier nuclear scientist Abdul Qadir Khan revealed in a March 1987 interview that Pakistan had manufactured a nuclear bomb. Although Khan later retracted his statement, India stated that the disclosure was "forcing us to review our option." The tensions created by the military exercises and the nuclear issue were defused following talks at the foreign secretary level in New Delhi (January 31-February 4) and Islamabad (February 27-March 2), during which the two sides agreed to a phased troop withdrawal to peacetime positions. The sudden death of Zia in an air crash in August 1988 and the assumption of the prime ministership by Benazir Bhutto in December 1988 after democratic elections provided the two countries with an unexpected opportunity to improve relations. Rajiv Gandhi's attendance at the SAARC summit in Islamabad in December 1988 permitted the two prime ministers to establish a personal rapport and to sign three bilateral agreements, including one proscribing attacks on each other's nuclear facilities. Despite the personal sympathy between the two leaders and Bhutto's initial emphasis on the 1972 Simla Accord as the basis for warmer bilateral ties, domestic political

8 pressures, particularly relating to unrest in Sindh, Punjab, and Kashmir effectively destroyed the chances for improved relations in 1989 and For her part, Bhutto backed away from her comments on the Simla Accord by continuing to press the Kashmir issue internationally, and Indian public opinion forced Rajiv Gandhi and his successor, V.P. Singh, to take a hard line on events relating to Kashmir. In the early 1990s, Indian-Pakistani relations remained troubled despite bilateral efforts and changes in the international environment. High-level dialogue on a range of bilateral issues took place between foreign ministers and prime ministers at the UN and at other international meetings. However, discussions over confidence-building measures, begun in the summer of 1990 as a response to the Kashmir confrontation, were canceled in June 1992 following mutual expulsions of diplomats for alleged espionage activities. In June 1991, Pakistani prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif proposed talks by India, Pakistan, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China to consider making South Asia a nuclear-free zone, but the minority governments of Chandra Shekhar and subsequently that of Narasimha Rao declined to participate. Nevertheless, negotiations concerning the Siachen Glacier resumed in November 1992 after a hiatus of three years. By the mid-1990s, little had occurred to improve bilateral relations as unrest in Jammu and Kashmir accelerated and domestic politics in both nations were unsettled. c.f: Important documents and links for further research 1. This shall provide the relevant documents concerning Kashmir in the United Nations 2. This is the actual text of the Instrument of Accession This is the actual text of the Karachi Agreement This is the official site of the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan This is the actual text of the Simla Accord. Questions to be addressed When we look at the Kashmir issue, we need to adopt an approach that keeps in mind the chronology of the events that have taken place. Firstly we need to look at whether the issue should be discussed in a body like the General Assembly at all, considering the fact that both the countries have maintained that this is an internal issue in between them. We need to look at how this issue affects the other countries in the world and geo-political equation in the world.

9 Secondly, we need to critically analyze the role of the UN missions. Bodies like the UNCIP and the UNMOGIP and their respective roles need to be looked upon. Thirdly, we also need to address the critical issue of self determination of the Kashmiris within the realms of International law. We also need to look at the legal legitimacy of the plebiscite and the territorial claims that both Islamabad and New Delhi have made on the Kashmiri territory. Also Human Rights Violations that have been reported in the region need to be looked upon in due detail. Having said this, this blue print for discussion is just a sample. I would urge the delegates to not just limit themselves to this, but to contribute to the discussion in whatever way possible.