UNITED NATIONS - Pakistan on Wednesday raised the Kashmir issue at the United Nations General Assembly, with a fervent call for implementation of Security Council resolutions calling for the exercise by Kashmiri people of their right to self-determination.

"The denial of self-determination to the people of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir has resulted in some of the most atrocious human rights violations including rape, torture, arbitrary detentions and summary executions," Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said in a High-Level Thematic Debate of the 193-member Assembly on human rights at the centre of the global agenda.

"Its most chilling recent example is the extra-judicial killing last week of a Kashmiri leader, Burhan Wani, shot to death by Indian forces alongwith dozens of other innocent Kashmiris," the Pakistani envoy told delegates from around the world. Wani's death on Friday sparked off huge protest demonstration across Jammu and Kashmir. Government forces fired live rounds and tear gas killing 36 people. 

The violence in Indian-occupied Kashmir is the worst seen in the State for years. Some 800 extra troops are being sent to help restore order.

More than 250 other people have been injured in the clashes.

"The occupation forces in Indian Held Jammu and Kashmir are resorting to these brutal acts to suppress the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people, promised to them by several UN Security Council resolutions," Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said.

Despite Indian suppression, she said,that the Kashmiri people were determined to continue their struggle for freedom from foreign occupation.

"Sixty-eight years after the UN Security Council first called for a UN conducted plebiscite to allow the Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination, the fulfilment of this pledge remains the only way to resolve this long-standing dispute and establish durable peace and security in South Asia," Maleeha Lodhi told the General Assembly.

"Universal realisation of the right to self-determination will help to resolve several conflicts and prevent the violation of human rights in different parts of the world,"she added

Responding to Pakistan's statement, India's UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin levelled familiar charges that Pakistan supports terrorism and covets the  territory of other countries-- obviously meaning Kashmir.

He accused Pakistan of misusing the UN platform by raising the Kashmir issue. "Regrettably, earlier today we have seen an attempt at misuse of this UN platform. The attempt came from Pakistan; a country that covets the territory of others; a country that uses terrorism as State policy towards that misguided end; a country that extols the virtues of terrorists and that provides sanctuary to UN-designated terrorists; and a country that masquerades its efforts as support for human rights and self determination," said Akbaruddin.

"Pakistan, is the same country whose track record has failed to convince the international community to gain membership of the Human Rights Council in this very Session of the UNGA. The international community has long seen through such designs. Cynical attempts, like the one this morning therefore, find no resonance in this forum or elsewhere in the United Nations," the Indian envoy added.