Pakistan appealed to India to reconsider suspension of Indus Waters Treaty: Report
India had announced the suspension of the six-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty as one of its actions against Pakistan following the April 22 Pahalgam attack.
Pakistan recently “appealed” to India to reconsider its decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, citing the dependence of millions of people on the water, Times of India reported, citing sources.
Pakistan's letter to the Indian government surfaced days after the ceasefire understanding was achieved by the two estranged neighbours following a four-day military conflict.
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India had on April 23 announced a string of punitive actions against Pakistan in the aftermath of the April 22 terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. These included the suspension of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, closure of the integrated check post at Attari border and reduction of the strength of Pakistani high commissions in India.
According to the ToI report, Syed Ali Murtaza, secretary of Pakistan's water resources ministry, wrote the ‘appeal’ letter to his Indian counterpart, Debashree Mukherjee. The letter is reportedly likely to have been delivered to Indian authorities during Operation Sindoor.
In the letter, Pakistan called India's decision to keep Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance "unilateral and illegal", adding that it was "equivalent to an attack on the people of Pakistan and its economy".
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The military conflict began after Pakistan attacked India's military and civilian infrastructure following the Indian armed forces' strikes against terrorist bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
India on Tuesday clarified that the ceasefire understanding doesn't affect the punitive actions it took against Pakistan, including the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.
At a press conference, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that New Delhi will keep the "Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures support for cross-border terrorism".
The ToI report quoted a senior source and said, “The treaty was negotiated in a spirit of goodwill and good neighbourliness. That is why we persisted with it despite the fact that it was flawed and loaded against India. However, Pakistan's refusal to rein in the terrorists has knocked the very premise underpinning the treaty.”
On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well, while making his first address to the nation since Operation Sindoor, referred to the Indus Waters Treaty's suspension and said that "water and blood can never flow together".
In its official notification to Pakistan about the suspension of the six decades-old treaty, India had said that Islamabad breached the conditions of the treaty.
The letter stated that sustained cross-border terrorism by Pakistan targeting Jammu and Kashmir impedes India's rights under the Indus Waters Treaty.
Brokered by the World Bank, the Indus Waters Treaty defines a mechanism for water sharing and information exchange between the two nuclear-armed neighbor nations for the use of the Indus River water and its five tributaries Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Jhelum, and Chenab.
Last week, World Bank president Ajay Banga also ruled out any intervention in the suspension of the treaty and clarified that the body's role is limited to that of a facilitator.
“We have no role to play beyond a facilitator. There’s a lot of speculation in the media about how the World Bank will step in and fix the problem, but it’s all bunk. The World Bank’s role is merely as a facilitator,” Banga said as per a Press Information Bureau statement.
