United Nations, Oct 17: In a strong indictment of Pakistan, India has charged Islamabad with continuing to indulge in terrorism while claiming to be a part of the global alliance against terror. Trying to correct the "misconception" that the fight against terrorism was born out of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, its representative told the Security Council that India has been at the "forefront" of fight against terrorism for almost two decades during which 60,000 people, mainly women and children, have lost their lives to the scourge.
"Most recently, in a major incident, 52 bystanders were killed in the twin terrorist attacks in city of Mumbai," he said in voice charged with emotion. Participating in the security debate on threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts, Indian deputy permanent representative to the UN A. Gopinathan quoted extensively from newspaper reports and articles to stress that Pakistan is still encouraging terrorists despite its claims to the contrary.
"Unfortunately, some states regard terrorism as a low-cost means of inflicting damage to the social, political and economic well-being of their supposed detractors by pursuing a form of low intensity warfare without attendant risks," he said.
Despite the claim that they are part of global alliance against terror, they stand "implicated by their past records and present inability to come clean," Gopinathan said without naming Pakistan but obviously referring to it. In this connection, he referred to a recent article in an American daily, which accused Pakistan of allowing renegade Taliban forces a safe haven from which to "regroup, recruit, cross into Afghanistan and cause mayhem," a fact that afghan leaders have sought consistently to underscore at the highest level.
Referring to the secretary-general Kofi Annan's report that the grenade used in the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001 were produced in Pakistan, Gopinathan said this in itself is a telling story as also indicative of "double standards that we sometimes seem to operate under".
"But we in India did not require this corroboration of a fact that we had already deduced on the basis of solid and incontrovertible evidence gathered from the terrorists and their accomplices themselves," he told the council members. Bureau Report