United Nations: The UN Security Council (UNSC) is to hold closed-door consultations on the Kashmir developments on Friday at the request of China, a diplomat at the Security Council said on Thursday.
The diplomat said that China's request for the meeting was made in a letter and came up during the Council's informal consultations on Wednesday.
The format of the meeting as a closed-door consultation would preclude Pakistan participating in it, the diplomat said.
The last time there was a full Security Council meeting on the Himalayan region was in 1965.
Friday's discussion is not considered a full security meeting but rather referred to as closed door consultations, which are becoming increasingly more common, diplomats said.
As a closed-door meeting, the consultation's proceedings would be secret, without being broadcast or accessible to reporters.
China wanted the consultations to take place on Thursday, but since the schedule was already set for the day without any meetings, it was to be taken up on Friday, the diplomat said.
The diplomat said that the office of the Security Council President Joanna Wronecka of Poland was working out the details for holding the meeting and when it was to be held.
Pakistan had asked for a meeting of the UNSC on Kashmir following India's decision to rescind Articles 370 and 35A of its Constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir a special status.
What the permanent members say
Except for China, all the other four permanent members of the Council have openly backed New Delhi's position that disputes between India and Pakistan are bilateral matters, with the US even saying that the Kashmir developments are an internal matter of India.
The consultations on Wednesday were on Syria and Central Africa, but China brought up the Pakistani request made in a letter to the Council.
Other sources said that France and China differed at the meeting on how the Kashmir issue should be discussed.
While China wanted the consultation to be formally dedicated to the Kashmir issue, France wanted it to be taken up at a lower level as "other matters" in a consultation - a sort of footnote to a consultation, sources said.
Pakistan's FM writes to Security Council
"Pakistan will not provoke a conflict. But India should not mistake our restraint for weakness," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote in a letter to the Security Council on Tuesday. "If India chooses to resort again to the use of force, Pakistan will be obliged to respond, in self-defense, with all its capabilities."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on India and Pakistan to refrain from any steps that could affect the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Guterres also said he was concerned about reports of restrictions on the Indian side of Kashmir.
The Security Council adopted several resolutions in 1948 and in the 1950s on the dispute between India and Pakistan over the region, including one which says a plebiscite should be held to determine the future of the mostly Muslim Kashmir.
Another resolution also calls upon both sides to "refrain from making any statements and from doing or causing to be done or permitting any acts which might aggravate the situation." U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed since 1949 to observe a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
Imran Khan questions world's 'silence'
Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday questioned the international community's "silence" on the Kashmir situation and warned that "if ethnic cleansing of Muslims takes place in the region, there would be severe repercussions".
Pakistan observed India's Independence Day on Thursday as "Black Day" amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours following New Delhi's move to scrap Article 370 granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
"In Indian … Kashmir, 12 days of curfew, presence of extra troops in an already heavily militarised occupied territory... complete communication blackout -- with the example of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi's earlier ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Gujarat," the cricketer-turned-politician wrote on Twitter.
(Compiled from Agency reports)
