Pakistan warns of dangerous situation over water issues with India

New Delhi: Pakistan warned on Friday that water issues with India can lead to a dangerous situation and that Islamabad wants a peaceful resolution of such problems as per the spirit of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).
Foreign Office spokesperson Muhammad Faisal, during the weekly media briefing, said the World Bank has assured that the international agreement will not be breached.
He said Islamabad has been effectively raising the issue of India’s Kishanganga project to resolve it through a dispute resolution mechanism provided by the pact.
Lately, Pakistan sent a four-member delegation to the World Bank in Washington to raise the issue of the inauguration of the Kishanganga hydropower plant by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which it said was in violation of the agreement.
Pakistan has opposed the project as it “violates a World Bank-mediated treaty” on the sharing of waters from the Indus and its tributaries upon which 80 per cent of its irrigated agriculture depends. New Delhi claims that the treaty allows it to build “run-of-river” hydel projects that do not change the course of the river and do not deplete the water level downstream.
Disagreeing with the Indian interpretation, Islamabad said that the Kishanganga project not only violates the course of the river but also depletes its water level.