India claims diplomatic victory over Pak in UN

New Delhi/United tions, Sept 22: India on Thursday claimed diplomatic victory over Pakistan at the United tions amid deteriorating bilateral ties following the killing of 18 soldiers in a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

Exterl Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters here that India was “sensitising the world” about how Pakistan was sponsoring terrorism.

“Our actions speak for themselves and you can see our actions are already delivering results,” Swarup said, a day after Pakistan Prime Minister waz Sharif aggressively raised the Kashmir issue in his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.

The spokesperson said most countries have condemned Sunday’s terror attack at Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) — the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.

“No one, and I mean no other country, at the UN has spoken on the subject waz Sharif devoted 80 per cent of his time to,” Swarup said.

He said that, on the contrary, virtually every country has referred to terrorism as the main threat to intertiol peace and security, a fact that Pakistan still remains in denial of.

“Four of the five members of the Security Council have also spoken and their statements are also available for everyone to see,” the MEA spokesperson added.

About Pakistan submitting a dossier against India to the UN, Swarup said there was no mention of such thing in the read-out given by the Secretary General’s Office.

“It makes no mention of the dossier. It does not talk about the Secretary General wanting to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the Secretary General has very wisely said that this issue needs to be settled bilaterally,” Swarup said, adding that in addition there have been a flurry of bilateral statements issued in all the major world capitals condemning the Uri terror attack in the strongest terms.

“So, I think this itself makes very clear how successful Pakistan’s diplomatic strategy has been,” he added.

Asserting that the onus now is squarely on Pakistan to act against terrorist groups and entities which find safe haven in Pakistan, he said the country must dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism if it has to become a responsible member of the comity of tions.

India has said the militants who attacked the military base had come from Pakistan and belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), headed by Masood Azhar — the militant commander released in exchange for passengers of an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Afghanistan in December 1999.

Asked if India was preparing any fresh dossier on Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist activities, Swarup said: “We don’t need a dossier; the whole world is aware of Pakistan’s role in promoting terror.”

India also raised at UN the possibility that Pakistan is guilty of “war crimes” by sponsoring terrorism as an instrument of state policy, delivering one of the harshest criticism of its neighbour in an intertiol forum in recent times.

Formally responding to Prime Minister waz Sharif’s attacks on India during his speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Indian diplomat Eem Gambhir said, “The worst violation of human rights is terrorism. When practiced as an instrument of state policy it is a war crime.”

Gambhir, who is a First Secretary at India’s UN Mission, was exercising the right of reply to Sharif’s caustic statements about India.

She accused Pakistan of being “a terrorist state, which channelises billions of dollars, much of it diverted from intertiol aid, to training, fincing and supporting terrorist groups as militant proxies against it neighbours.”

Gambhir invoked the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center that killed about 3,000 people in 2001 and marked a tectonic shift in the intertiol recognition of the horrors of terrorism.

“The world has not yet forgotten that the trail of that dastardly attack led all the way to Abbottabad in Pakistan,” she said.

Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden who was responsible for the attack was found hiding in Abbottabad close to the Pakistan Military Academy and killed on May 2, 2011, in an operation led by the US.

Terrorist organisations and their leaders, “continue to roam its streets freely and operate with state support,” Gambhir said, adding “With the approval of authorities, many terrorist organisations raise funds openly in flagrant violation of Pakistan’s intertiol obligations.”

Gambhir traced the web of terror spanning the world that converges on Pakistan and said, “It is ironical, therefore, that we have seen today the preaching of human rights and ostensible support for self-determition by a country which has established itself as the global epicentre of terrorism.”

“The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism,” she said. “The effect of its toxic curriculum are felt across the globe.”

She brought up Sunday’s terror attack at an army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri town that killed 18 soldiers. (IANS)