Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly, at UN headquarters, in New York, on September 27, 2019.BRENDAN MCDERMID/Reuters
Insisting he wasn’t making a threat, Pakistan’s leader denounced his Indian counterpart on Friday and warned that any war between the nuclear rivals could “have consequences for the world.” India’s Prime Minister took the opposite approach, skipping any mention at the United Nations of his government’s crackdown in the disputed region of Kashmir.
“When a nuclear-armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have consequences for the world,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a wide-ranging, at times apparently extemporaneous UN General Assembly speech in which he called Mr. Modi’s actions in Kashmir “stupid” and “cruel.”
“That’s not a threat,” he said of his war comments. “It’s a fair worry. Where are we headed?”
An hour earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the UN meeting with a speech that focused primarily on his country’s development, although he warned of the spreading spectre of terrorism. He never mentioned Kashmir directly.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region. They’ve been locked in a worsening standoff since Aug. 5, when Mr. Modi stripped limited autonomy from the portion of Kashmir that India controls.
Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist government imposed a sweeping military curfew and cut off residents in the Muslim-majority region from virtually all communications. Mr. Khan said there were 900,000 Indian forces in the region policing 8 million Kashmiris.
“What’s he going to do when he lifts the curfew? Does he think the people of Kashmir are quietly going to accept the status quo?” Mr. Khan said. “What is going to happen when the curfew is lifted will be a bloodbath.”
He added: “They will be out in the streets. And what will the soldiers do? They will shoot them. … Kashmiris will be further radicalized.”
While not mentioning Kashmir by name, Mr. Modi touched on terrorism: “We belong to a country that has given the world not war, but Buddha’s message of peace. And that is the reason why our voice against terrorism, to alert the world about this evil, rings with seriousness and outrage.”
Mr. Modi has defended the Kashmir changes as freeing the territory from separatism. His supporters have welcomed the move.
The difference in speech styles was striking, with Mr. Modi sticking closely to a prepared text and Mr. Khan appearing to speak off the cuff and riff. While the UN distributed a transcript of Mr. Modi’s speech moments after he finished talking, Mr. Khan’s had not been released nearly two hours later.
Ahead of Mr. Modi’s and Mr. Khan’s appearances at the UN, residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir expressed hope that their speeches would turn world attention to an unprecedented lockdown in the region.
“We really hope these leaders will do something to rid us of conflict and suppression,” said Nazir Ahmed, a schoolteacher on the outskirts of Srinagar, the main city in Indian-held Kashmir. “Conflict is like a cancer hitting every aspect of life. And Kashmiris have been living inside this cancer for decades now.”
As the two leaders spoke Friday, large duelling protests supporting and opposing India’s action in Kashmir were taking place across the street from UN headquarters.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who met with both Mr. Modi and Mr. Khan this week, has urged the sides to resolve their differences.
India and Pakistan’s conflict over Kashmir dates to the late 1940s, when they won independence from Britain. The region is one of the most heavily militarized in the world, patrolled by soldiers and paramilitary police. Most Kashmiris resent the Indian troop presence.
Mr. Modi, a pro-business Hindu nationalist, and his party won a decisive re-election in May. The election was seen as a referendum on Mr. Modi, the son of a poor tea seller whose economic reforms have had mixed results. But he has enjoyed enduring popularity as a social underdog in India’s highly stratified society.
Critics, however, say his Hindu-first platform risks exacerbating social tensions in the country of 1.3 billion people.
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