New Delhi: India on Friday (June 5, 2020) called Pakistan a "nerve centre" of terrorism and issued a rebuttal to Pakistan's claim that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has misrepresented the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team's report.


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MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that Pakistan`s leadership has gone on record to acknowledge that terrorists have used their country`s soil to carry out terror attacks on other countries.


"Instead of casting aspersions on the (UN) report, Pakistan should introspect and put an end to any kind of support for terrorism emanating from territories under its control. UN and the international community is well acquainted with the reality that Pakistan is the nerve centre of terrorism," Srivastava said.


"Pakistan`s Ministry of Foreign Affairs would do well to recall that their Prime Minister admitted last year that Pakistan hosts 30,000-40,000 terrorists. Pakistan`s leadership is on record acknowledging that in past terrorists used the country`s soil to carry out terror attacks on other countries," he said.


In 2019, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan made the revelation while speaking at the US Institute of Peace in Washington. He had said that his country still has about 30,000 to 40,000 terrorists "who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir".


Srivastava was responding to media queries on a press release by Pakistan`s Foreign Office released on June 4. 


Here's the full text of MEA statement:


In response to media queries on a press release no. 238/2020 dated 4th June 2020 by Pakistan Foreign Office, the Official Spokesperson, Mr. Anurag Srivastava said:

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan would do well to recall that their Prime Minister admitted last year that Pakistan still hosts 30,000 to 40,000 terrorists. Pakistan’s leadership is also on record acknowledging that in the past terrorists had used the country's soil to carry out terror attacks on other countries.

The UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team Report has only reiterated what the Prime Minister of Pakistan has already confessed. Instead of casting aspersions on the Report, Pakistan should introspect and put an end to any kind of support for terrorism emanating from territories under its control. The UN and the international community is well acquainted with the reality that Pakistan is the nerve center of terrorism. It houses one of the largest numbers of UN designated terrorists and terrorist entities. Its fallacious attempts to point fingers at others cannot deflect attention from the facts on the ground.

Moreover, Pakistan’s attempts to create a divide in the traditional and friendly relations between the people of India and Afghanistan will not succeed. The people of Afghanistan and the international community are well aware of who the ‘spoiler’ is, and who is sheltering, training, arming and financing terrorists and sponsoring violence against innocent Afghans and members of the international community."


On Thursday, Pakistan`s Foreign Office issued a statement claiming that India had misrepresented the UN report to "slander" Pakistan.


The UN had issued a report last month stating there are some 6,500 Pakistani nationals among foreign terrorists operating in Afghanistan and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) play a key role in bringing foreign fighters into the war-torn country.