ISLAMABAD: Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States Rizwan Saeed Sheikh said that India\u2019s unilateral announcement of April 2025 cannot alter the Indus Waters Treaty\u2019s (IWT) legal status or extinguish the rights and obligations arising under it, asserting the Treaty remains valid, operative and binding. \u201cFor more than six decades, the IWT has provided a rules-based framework for managing one of the world\u2019s most important transboundary river systems. Its resilience has rested not on political goodwill, but on the fact that it replaced unilateral discretion with binding rules and procedures for resolving disputes, the ambassador wrote in an article \u2018India Must Respect Indus Waters Treaty,\u2019 published in the Newsweek. DNA
\nHe said undermining a time-tested water treaty, with a malicious aim of weaponizing transboundary rivers, would not only reduce certainty and predictability, but also pose a serious threat to peace and stability in an already volatile region.
\nResponding to an article entitled \u201cA Treaty Pakistan Destroyed Long Before India Set It Aside\u201d, written by India\u2019s Ambassador to the United States Vinay Kwatra, Amb. Sheikh said India had been advancing this narrative with increasing frequency since its unlawful pronouncement in April 2025 to hold the Treaty \u201cin abeyance.\u201d
\n\u201cIt appears intended to retrospectively justify a unilateral action that finds no basis either in the Treaty itself or in international law,\u201d he emphasised.
\nThe ambassador said the IWT is a binding international agreement concluded on September 19, 1960 after decade-long negotiations facilitated by the World Bank. It was neither an act of Indian generosity nor a concession to Pakistan.
\nIt was a carefully negotiated legal settlement designed to replace upstream discretion with clearly defined and binding rights and obligations, thereby providing certainty, predictability and stability in the management of the Indus River System, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD: Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States Rizwan Saeed Sheikh said that India\u2019s unilateral announcement of April 2025 cannot alter the Indus Waters Treaty\u2019s (IWT) legal status or extinguish the rights and obligations arising under it, asserting the Treaty remains valid, operative and binding. \u201cFor more than six decades, the IWT has provided a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-564527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"\n