At UN, PM Shehbaz Sharif Urges Middle East Peace, Warns India Against Weaponizing Water

United Nations,: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Friday called for renewed diplomacy to end escalating conflicts in the Middle East, while warning India that any attempt to stop, impede or divert Pakistan’s share of river waters would be treated as an act of war.
Addressing the General Debate of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the prime minister said Pakistan had chosen dialogue over confrontation, cooperation over coercion, and peace over war. “War is a choice. Peace is also a choice. And sometimes, the greater courage lies not in starting a war, but in preventing one,” he said.
Shehbaz Sharif credited Pakistan’s diplomacy for helping bring Washington and Tehran to the negotiating table in Islamabad, leading to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, and praised Deputy PM/Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir for their role. He strongly condemned recent Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, including an alleged attempted strike on Makkah, calling the safety of the Haramain Sharifain a “red line.”
On last year’s conflict with India, he said Pakistan’s armed forces, led by Field Marshal Munir, had “silenced the enemy” in self-defense, while crediting President Trump’s “resolute and visionary” intervention with helping avert a wider confrontation. He linked lasting South Asian peace to a just settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and accused India of rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
On water, Shehbaz Sharif said India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty had no legal basis and declared water “must never be weaponized.” He devoted a significant portion of his speech to Gaza, invoking the deaths of children including Hind Rajab and Wafaa Akila, and reiterated Pakistan’s call for an independent Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital. He said Pakistan had lost nearly 100,000 civilians and security personnel and suffered over $150 billion in economic losses fighting militancy, and urged Afghanistan to stop its territory being used by groups Islamabad calls Fitna al-Khawarij and Fitna al-Hindustan.