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14-01-2024
NEW DELHI/ MUMBAI: India said on Saturday it had lodged a protest over a senior British diplomat’s visit to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, saying the trip this week had infringed on India’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
Kashmir is claimed in full, but controlled only in part, by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars and engaged in numerous clashes over the Himalayan region since 1947.
British High Commissioner to Pakistan Jane Marriott visited Pakistani Kashmir along with an official from the UK Foreign Office on Jan. 10, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra has lodged a “strong protest” to the British High Commissioner to India about the visit, the ministry said, calling the trip “unacceptable”.
Asked to comment on the Indian protest, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office confirmed Marriott’s visit and added: “She met with the UK-Pakistani diaspora, played in a football match with street children and visited a bakery.”
This week’s visit came as both India and Pakistan head to polls for elections this year.
India had lodged a protest over his visit with the US, but New Delhi had not announced whether the US ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, was summoned.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had then said, “We have objections regarding the visit and the meetings in PoK by the US envoy and we have conveyed the same.”
Marriott had framed her visit to Mirpur as a diaspora outreach exercise.
“Salaam from Mirpur, the heart of the UK and Pakistan’s people-to-people ties! Seventy per cent of British-Pakistani roots are from Mirpur, making our work together crucial for diaspora interests. Thank you for your hospitality!” said Marriott, also the first woman British high commissioner to Pakistan, on her January 10 visit.
According to a press release by the UK high commission in Islamabad about the Mirpur visit, the British diplomat was “delighted to gain insight into how cross-cultural influences had shaped Mirpur into the city it is today”.
Accompanied by the head of the Pakistan department at the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Richard Lindsay, she also met with the political leadership of PoK, which Pakistan terms as Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Marriott’s outreach exercise also created a storm among Hindutva activists on social media.
