Pakistan will recall its diplomats from India and expel Indian diplomats in response to New Delhi's decision to abolish the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Wednesday
NEW DELHI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th August, 2019) Pakistan will recall its diplomats from India and expel Indian diplomats in response to New Delhi's decision to abolish the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Wednesday.Pakistan's National Security Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, decided earlier in the day to downgrade diplomatic relations with India and suspend bilateral trade following New Delhi's move to revoke Article 370 of the constitution, which had guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir state a degree of autonomy for decades.
"Our ambassadors will no longer be in New Delhi and their counterparts here will also be sent back," Qureshi said after the meeting of the committee, as quoted by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper.
Article 370 of the Indian constitution protected the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, requiring the mandatory approval of most of the laws adopted by the Indian parliament in the local assembly. The Indian government now wants to split the Ladakh region from Jammu and Kashmir and grant it the status of a union territory, which means it would be directly controlled by the Federal government. The remainder of the state will become a second union territory. However, the Ladakh region will not have its own legislature, unlike Jammu and Kashmir.
