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ISLAMABAD, Jan 14 (AP): Pakistan urged India Friday not to let a dispute over a dam hinder relations already bedeviled by the decades-old conflict over Kashmir.
India is building the dam in its portion of the Himalayan region, and Pakistan fears it will deprive its main agricultural province of water for irrigation.
"I would urge upon India that let this not be added as another irritant," Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri told state-run Pakistan Television. "This would really be self-defeating."
Kashmir - the main cause of tension between the two counties - is divided between them but each claims the former princely state in its entirety. They have fought two wars over Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947.
Islamabad has demanded that construction of the Baglihar hydroelectric dam on the Chenab River stop in India's Jammu-Kashmir state, after negotiations between the two countries failed in New Delhi last week to settle the dispute.
Officials have said Pakistan will go to the World Bank seeking arbitration.
Islamabad says the dam violates a 1960 accord - the Indus Water Treaty - that the bank brokered to share water from rivers that flow from Indian Kashmir into Pakistan.
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