Pakistan summons US envoy over Kashmir ‘part of India’ remark
Islamabad lodges formal protest after Ambassador Sergio Gor calls disputed region "important part of India" during visit to Srinagar
ISLAMABAD (MNTV) — Pakistan summoned the top US diplomat in Islamabad on Wednesday to protest remarks by the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, who described the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir as “an important part of India” during a visit to the Indian-administered part of the region.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said it lodged a “strong demarche” — a formal diplomatic protest — with the US chargé d’affaires over what it called Gor’s “factually incorrect” characterization, according to a statement issued in Islamabad.
It “categorically rejected” describing Kashmir as part of India, calling the territory “an internationally recognised disputed territory” whose final status should be settled under UN Security Council resolutions and “the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.”
Pakistan refers to the Indian-controlled portion as Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Gor, a close aide of President Donald Trump who also serves as US special envoy for South and Central Asia, made the comments Wednesday in Srinagar during his first visit to the region, after meeting the local chief minister, Omar Abdullah.
He praised the region’s beauty, said Americans would enjoy visiting, and suggested Washington could review its “do not travel” advisory.
He did not announce any change to formal US policy on the dispute. It was the first standalone visit to the region by a serving US ambassador since 2018.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, has been divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both since their partition in 1947, and they have fought multiple wars over it.
Islamabad’s statement said Gor’s remarks contradicted Washington’s long-standing position on the dispute. Tensions between the neighbors remain high after a brief but intense military conflict in May 2025 — which Pakistan calls “Marka-e-Haq,” or “Battle of Truth” — that followed a deadly attack on tourists in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir.
India blamed Pakistan-based militants; Pakistan denied involvement and called for an independent investigation.
Pakistan’s statement said it appreciated Trump’s offer to mediate the dispute — an offer India has repeatedly rejected, insisting Kashmir is a bilateral matter — and urged Washington to keep its public statements “consistent with the disputed status” of the region.
The remarks also drew a rebuke from Masood Khan, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and China and a former president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the part of the region Pakistan controls.
He said Gor’s comments revealed a “lack of understanding” of the territory’s history and that the envoy should have been briefed on Washington’s own Kashmir policy and the roughly dozen UN Security Council resolutions on the dispute.
Jammu and Kashmir “is not part of India and remains on the active agenda of the Security Council,” Khan wrote, noting that a UN military observer mission, UNMOGIP, has monitored the India-Pakistan ceasefire line for decades, and that the region’s future should be decided by its people under UN resolutions.
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