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The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday asserted that Kashmir will always be a part of India and the stand will never change regardless of any statement issued by anyone.
This came in response to the joint statement issued by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, where they called for a resolution on the ongoing Kashmir issue under the UN Charter. "On Kashmir's issue, you know our stand. Kashmir is ours and will remain ours. This is our statement and this is our stand. If someone says something, it doesn't change anything," MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said during a press briefing today. Meanwhile, the MEA said that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar did not hold any bilateral meetings with Pakistan and further mentioned that the EAM's recent visit to Islamabad was just for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's Council of Heads of Government meeting. Jaiswal further added that apart from the SCO CHG meeting, the only bilateral talk Jaishankar held was with Mongolia. " When EAM was about to travel to Islamabad, we had issued a statement that this particular visit is for the SCO Council of Heads of Government meeting. Beyond that in Islamabad, the only bilateral EAM had was with Mongolia," the MEA Spokesperson said. On Wednesday, during his address at SCO, Jaishankar termed cross-border terrorism, extremism, and separatism as the "three evils" that hinder trade and people-to-people relations between countries. He took a veiled jibe at Pakistan to state that if activities across borders are characterised by terrorism, extremism, and separatism, they are "hardly likely to encourage trade, energy flows, connectivity and people-to-people exchanges in parallel." EAM Jaishankar later departed from Islamabad to Delhi after the summit. Jaishankar thanked Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar for their hospitality in an X post. (ANI)
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