UNGA President will ‘think’ about fake pictures issue

By Arul Louis

United Nations, Sep 27 (IANS) General Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak has said that he will "certainly think" about how to deal with erroneous use of pictures.

The use of a fake picture by Pakistan's Permanent Representative Maleeha Lodhi on Saturday while responding to India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj' speech came up during his news conference on Tuesday.

He was asked if he would like to see "some sort of factual baseline" set so that "when people make a mistake they correct it, not in terms of an opinion statement, but the use of a photograph."

Lajcak said, "I will certainly think about it."

However, he prefaced it by indicating that it was matter of diplomacy and the rights and sensitivities of nations.

"It is not for me to answer. It's for the delegations that are involved. I want to use but not misuse my position as President of the General Assembly," he said.

On Saturday, Lodhi had held up picture of an injured Palestinian girl from Gaza that had been published two years ago by The New York Times claiming she was a victim from Kashmir.

On Monday, Paulomi Tripathi, a First Secretary in the Indian Mission, told the General Assembly that Pakistan was callously exploiting the image of a Palestinian girl to "to divert attention from Pakistan's role as the hub of global terrorism."

In response, Tipu Usman, a counsellor in the Pakistani Mission, made claimed that Lodhi's use of the fake picture "backfired" on India.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)