Thaindian News

Washington, Nov 22 (IANS) Admitting “inaccuracies”, the US State Department has taken off a map that depicted parts of Jammu and Kashmir as Pakistani territory with an assurance to get it “fixed” after a protest from India.

“We’ve taken the map down off the website. It did contain some inaccuracies which were associated with the boundaries of some geographic features,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday.

“This was unintentional. We’re going to get the map fixed and put up a fixed map,” she said acknowledging it was “inaccurate with regard to some geographic features” but would not say if it was “inaccurate over the delineation of Kashmir.”

“Well, my understanding is that is the way that it was inaccurate, that it wasn’t drawn properly,” Nuland said.

Asked if action would be taken against those responsible for the inaccurate map, she repeated: “I’ll say it again: The map was inaccurate; we’ve taken it down. We will put up the new map when we acquire one that we are confident is accurate.”

“And with regard to where the map came from, I think I’m not going to comment on that, other than to say it was inaccurate and we have so represented, and we will get it fixed.”

When told that the map was still on the department’s travel website, Nuland said: “All right, we’ll fix that one, too.”

Rejecting the “incorrect” depiction of India’s borders, India had Monday reaffirmed that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)