UN appoints new head to monitor Pak-India ceasefire

NEW DELHI: The United Nations (UN) has once again appointed a new head for its mission to monitor the ceasefire between India and Pakistan even as New Delhi maintains that it has become redundant long back.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has appointed Rear Admiral Guillermo Pablo Ríos of Argentina as Head of Mission and Chief Military Observer for the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), reported foreign media on Thursday.

Though India maintains that its 1972 agreement with Pakistan had rendered the UNMOGIP redundant, the UN continued with the mission, which in 2021 had an annual approved budget of over Rs83 crore.

Rear Admiral Ríos, who has been serving in the Argentinean Navy since 1988, will succeed Major General José Eladio Alcaín of Uruguay as the “Head of Mission and Chief Military Observer” of the UNMOGIP. Maj Gen Alcaín, who was appointed in July 2018, will shortly complete his assignment, according to a press release issued by the office of the UN Secretary-General.

The UNMOGIP established under a UN Security Council Resolution in 1948 was meant to supervise the Ceasefire Line established between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir in July 1949. New Delhi maintains that with the signing of the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan in July 1972 and the establishment of the Line of Control (LoC), the UNMOGIP has outlived its relevance.