Pakistan has summoned the US Charge d’Affaires in Islamabad to lodge a strong demarche over remarks by the US Ambassador to India about the status of Kashmir (Geo News).
Ambassador Sergio Gor, visiting Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, called it “an important part of India”.
The Foreign Office strongly condemned and categorically rejected the characterisation, saying IIOJK is an internationally recognised disputed territory awaiting final disposition in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and the aspirations of its people.
Its sharpest point was directed at Washington’s own record. The spokesperson said the ambassador’s statement “negated the long-standing and well-documented position of the US on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute” and ran contrary to American commitments — an argument that Pakistan is defending established US policy against a serving US ambassador.
The timing is awkward on both sides. Pakistan has spent the past six months as a principal mediator between Washington and Tehran, has just received public praise from President Trump for the Makkah defence agreement, and is seeking an Exchange Stabilisation Facility from the US Treasury with progress expected by September. A demarche over Kashmir sits uncomfortably alongside all three.
It also lands amid an active information contest with India: this week Pakistan rejected Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s claim of more than 200 arrests linked to Islamabad, the military dismissed an Indian documentary on Operation Sindoor, and Pakistan extended its airspace ban on Indian aircraft for a sixteenth time.
India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty after the Pahalgam attack and has kept it in abeyance, rejecting a Court of Arbitration ruling in Pakistan’s favour in May.
