Sharif Credits Trump at UNGA, Rakes Up Kashmir; India to Give Right of Reply
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif used the United Nations General Assembly podium on Friday to credit United States President Donald Trump for what he called a "timely intervention" in the 2025 conflict with India, and once again raised the Kashmir issue in his address.
The roughly 23-minute speech came after India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025, targeting what New Delhi described as terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India said the operation was a response to the April 22, 2025 terror attack at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, in which 26 civilians were killed.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly stated — including in his own address to the General Assembly — that he stopped a war between India and Pakistan. New Delhi has consistently denied any third-party intervention in the matter.
Mr. Sharif thanked Mr. Trump for his "resolute and visionary leadership", saying the American leader's intervention had saved hundreds of millions of lives in South Asia.
On Kashmir, Mr. Sharif said a just and fair solution to the issue was necessary so that South Asia does not again reach the "precipice" it faced in 2025.
India has rejected such assertions at the UNGA and at other UN platforms. New Delhi's stated position is that the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir "has been, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India." India also holds that issues between the two countries can only be discussed bilaterally, under the framework of the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration, and that there is no scope for third-party mediation.
As is the practice every year, India will field one of its youngest diplomats at its Permanent Mission to the UN to exercise its Right of Reply and respond to the Pakistani leader's address.
Mr. Sharif also referred to the Indus Waters Treaty, which India has said will remain in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably ends its support for cross-border and all other forms of terrorism. India placed the treaty in abeyance as part of a series of punitive diplomatic and economic measures announced soon after the Pahalgam attack.
In his address, Mr. Sharif also highlighted Pakistan's efforts to broker peace between the United States and Iran in the ongoing conflict in West Asia. He said Islamabad had brought Washington and Tehran "under one roof", referring to talks he said were held in Islamabad and to what he described as the "Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding".
He repeatedly thanked Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan's Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of the Army Staff, crediting his "relentless efforts" with creating "space for diplomacy under exceptionally difficult and challenging circumstances."
The UN General Assembly's annual general debate is a forum where member states set out their positions on global issues. Pakistan has raised the Kashmir issue at the forum for several years, and India has routinely responded through its Right of Reply, restating that the territory is an integral part of the country and that bilateral matters should be settled directly between the two neighbours.
