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Addressing the General Debate, Sharif said the shared waters of the Indus River system were “the lifeblood not only of the people of Pakistan, but of the entire region”, and that India’s unilateral decision to suspend existing agreements “did not have any legal basis”.
He said India’s claims had been rejected by UN experts and the Court of Arbitration.
“Water should not be used as a weapon. Rivers should make the nation healthy, not divide them,” he stressed.
‘Voice for diplomacy’
Regarding the conflict that rocked the Gulf in February, Sharif said Pakistan had brought Washington and Tehran together in Islamabad.
With the recent resurgence in hostilities, he said, “amid the roar of missiles, drones and guns, the voice of diplomacy must resound louder and stronger.” The Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea Bab el-Mandeb bottleneck “must remain open”, he added.
He condemned recent Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, including an attempted drone strike in Mecca.
Kashmir and Gaza
Sharif said Pakistan had exercised its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the law UN Charter when the country faced “external aggression from India” a year ago, and praised US President Donald Trump’s intervention as preventing all-out war between “two nuclear-armed neighbors”.
Ensuring South Asia no longer experiences “such an abyss”, he said, required a just solution to the Kashmir dispute, adding that the Kashmiri people had waited eight decades for a UN vote.
“For generations it has experienced illegal occupation, arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, sexual violence and collective punishment,” he said.
On Islamophobia, he said, “RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] Hindutva ideology fanned religious hatred, leading to lynchings, communal violence, attacks on places of worship and restrictions on religious freedom.”
In Gaza, he remembers eight-year-old Wafa Akilah, murdered on her first day of school.
“Doesn’t a child born in Gaza deserve the same life, the same future and the same dreams as a child anywhere in the world?” he asked, adding that in the West Bank “the forced expulsion of Palestinians clearly reflects Israel’s genocidal agenda, which continues unabated”.
Sharif said terrorist groups were operating from sanctuaries in Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan and called on Afghan authorities to take “decisive and verifiable action”.
‘Peace is also a much better option’
Echoing 81st The theme of the session was restoring trust, with the Pakistani Prime Minister stating that trust would be restored when “guns are silenced and replaced with handshakes, hugs and smiles.”
“We choose dialogue over confrontation. We choose cooperation over coercion. We choose peace over war,” he said.
