Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has spoken of a home truth on water row with India. ‘We tend to exaggerate our differences with India’, he told a questioner at a press conference in Islamabad on Friday, (April 30).
And went on to add that mismanagement was resulting in a loss of 34 million acre feet (MAF) of the 104 million acre feet water that flow into the country from India.
It is not clear whether the minister is voicing the views of his government. But it refreshing as politicians of all hues and militant outfits have been holding threats of a water jihad against India accusing the neighbour of ‘stealing’ its water share from three common rivers including the Sindh..
Qureshi’s blunt remarks followed a question whether Pakistan had taken up the water row during Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s meeting with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh in Thimphu on the sidelines of SAARC summit. He replied in the affirmative and said Pakistani authorities have a ‘tendency to exaggerate’ and ‘pass the buck’ in this regard.
India, Qureshi pointed out, supplies 104 MAF of water but the water that is consumed is 70 million acre feet.
‘Where are the 34 million acre feet of water going? Is India stealing that water from you? No, it is not. Please do not fool yourselves and do not misguide the nation. We are mismanaging that water’, the dapper foreign minister thundered.
Pakistan ‘must understand’ actions made by India, including the construction of dams and water projects, if they comply with the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, he said noting that the latest water row is a fall-out of India’s plans to build hydro-electric projects.
He went on to say: ‘We should examine the Indus Waters Treaty and its annexures which are binding. If there are any violations, we must take them up and will do it without any compromise as water is a matter of life and death for us’.
