Cross-Border Terrorism Will Inevitably Invite Consequences: India`s Stern Warning To Pakistan At UN

In a stern warning to Pakistan, India on Saturday said that cross-border terrorism against it will "inevitably invite consequences." India also ruled out any agreement while the neighbouring country indulges in terrorism. 

Bhavika Mangalanandan, a First Secretary in India's UN mission, delivered the strong message while exercising India's right of reply to Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif's attacks on New Delhi during his address to the General Assembly's high-level meeting. "Pakistan should realize that cross-border terrorism against India will inevitably invite consequences," she said.

Mangalanandan, who is a 2015 batch Indian Foreign Service officer with an MTech degree from IIT Delhi, deals with counter-terrorism matters at the UN.

It was a "travesty" for "a country run by the military with a global reputation for terrorism, narcotics trade, and transnational crime" to have "the audacity to attack the world's largest democracy," she said.

Sharif asserted that New Delhi had spurned his offer of "a mutual Strategic Restraint Regime." Explaining India's rejection, Mangalanandan said, "There can be no compact with terrorism."

"Pakistan has long employed cross-border terrorism as a weapon against its neighbours; it has attacked our Parliament, our financial capital, Mumbai, marketplaces, and pilgrimage routes. The list is long," she said. 

"The world can see for itself what Pakistan really is," she said. "We are talking about a nation that for long hosted (al-Qaeda terrorist organization's leader) Osama bin Laden, a country whose fingerprints are on so many terrorist incidents across the world, whose policies attract the dregs of many societies to make it their home."

"For such a country to speak about violence anywhere is hypocrisy at its worst," she said.

On the subject of hypocrisy, Managalanandan said, "It is even more extraordinary for a country with a history of rigged elections to talk about political choices that too in a democracy."

"The real truth is that Pakistan covets our territory and, in fact, has continuously used terrorism to disrupt elections in Jammu and Kashmir, an inalienable and integral part of India," she said.

Further stressing on the topic of hypocrisy, she added, "It is ridiculous that a nation that committed genocide in 1971 and which persecutes its minorities relentlessly, even now, dares speak about intolerances and phobias."

(With IANS Inputs)