United Nations, March 25 : India has told Pakistan to vacate the illegally occupied territory in Jammu and Kashmir and stop justifying state-sponsored terrorism.

Replying to a Pakistan attempt to raise Kashmir for the umpteenth time in the Security Council, India's Permanent Representative P. Harish said on Monday, 'Such repeated references neither validate their illegal claims nor justify their state-sponsored cross-border terrorism.'

'Pakistan continues to illegally occupy the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which it must vacate,' he said, adding "That would be in keeping with Security Council Resolution 47 adopted on April 21, 1948, that requires Pakistan to withdraw its forces and infiltrators from Kashmir."

'Jammu and Kashmir was, is, and will always be an integral part of India,' Harish declared.

He added, 'We would advise Pakistan not to try to divert the attention of this forum to drive their parochial and divisive agenda.'

Earlier during the debate on the new realities facing peacekeeping, Syed Tariq Fatemi, Pakistan's junior foreign affairs minister, said the Council should enforce its resolution on a plebiscite for Kashmir.

However, that resolution made it a point to demand that Pakistan 'secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting'. The resolution also orders Pakistan to stop aiding militants or infiltrating. It demanded that Islamabad 'prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State'.

A plebiscite could not be held when the Council resolution was passed because Pakistan sabotaged it by refusing to abide by the precondition of its withdrawal from Kashmir. India maintains that a plebiscite is now irrelevant because the people of Kashmir have made clear their allegiance to India by participating in elections and by electing the leaders of the territories.

Fatemi brought up the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) that was set up in 1949 to monitor the ceasefire along the Line of Control. India barely tolerates the UNMOGIP's presence in India considering it a relic of history made irrelevant by the 1972 Shimla agreement between the leaders of the two countries declaring the Kashmir dispute a bilateral issue with no room for third parties. India has ousted UNMOGIP from the government-provided building in New Delhi.

/IANS