Pakistan, Aug. 26 -- There is a fundamental problem with Indian Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra's defence of keeping the Indus Waters Treaty in "abeyance:" the political argument has moved considerably further than the law permits.

Kwatra argued that Pakistan had destroyed the goodwill underpinning the treaty long before India formally set it aside, pointing to terrorism, wars and Pakistan's repeated challenges to Indian hydropower projects.

It is an effective political narrative precisely because it combines several separate grievances into one indictment. Ironically, it is much less convincing as an explanation of what India is legally entitled to do under the treaty. International agreements do not normally survive for 66 years because...