The US, France, UK & Russia, backed by Germany & Indonesia, nixed China's proposal to discuss Kashmir at a closed-door UNSC meeting on Tuesday. This is the second time China has sought to discuss Kashmir at the closed-door session of the UNSC

New Delhi: The US, France, UK and Russia, backed by Germany and Indonesia, nixed China’s proposal to discuss Kashmir at a closed-door UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Tuesday, ET has learnt. While the US, which holds the rotating chair for UNSC, took the lead in opposing the proposal, France argued that Kashmir is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, the people aware of the matter told ET. A French diplomatic source said, “Our position has been very clear. Kashmir issue has to be treated bilaterally. We have highlighted this several times recently, including in New York.”

The development comes ahead of the proposed India-US two-plus two ministerial meet on Wednesday and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s likely trip to India this month for special representative (SR) talks. The people cited earlier said that the UK emphatically backed India’s stand on Kashmir—the first time it has done so in the UNSC — while Russia, another permanent member of UNSC, did not favour discussing the issue at the forum and said other vital global issues should be on the agenda.

Some other members of the 15-member UNSC, including Indonesia, had reservations that discussion regarding troop build-up on the Indian side of Line of Control is essentially an internal matter for New Delhi, informed sources told ET. A source said that the Chinese proposal was possibly to bring pressure on the next edition of SR talks and the point was to call for a discussion in the aftermath of the release of a revised map of J&K by the Indian government after the state’s bifurcation.

“A closed-door session in UNSC towards the closing of the Security Council for the holidays and one day before 2+2 talks and three days before Wang Yi’s visit to India on 21 Dec for the SR talks on the border does not make sense if Beijing did not want to pressurise India on the boundary issue,” a person familiar with the developments said.

Another person said it was China’s attempt to rattle India by claiming that the Indo-Pakistan and India-China border issues are on the agenda in the Security Council. The December 21 SR-level talk is the first edition of the India-China dialogue since re-election of the Narendra Modi-led government. At the informal summit at Mamallapuram, India and China had decided to give impetus to SR-level talks to enable launch of clarification of Line of Actual Control, the de facto boundary between the neighbours. This is the second time China has sought to discuss Kashmir at the closed-door session of the UNSC.