Chicago, June 13: Pakistan is the hotbed of alQaeda terrorist network, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani has said. He pointed out that Islamabad continued to engage incross border terrorism despite the peace initiative taken by New Delhi.
It is well-known, Advani said, both ideologically and
operationally, the main source of international terrorism lies
in Pakistan.
Many groups based in Pakistan carrying out terrorist
activities against India have links with al Qaeda, he told a
gathering at the Chicago council on foreign relations here
yesterday.
Advani pointed out that though India has the second
largest Muslim population after Indonesia, none of the al
Qaeda operatives caught by the United States belong to it.
But Pakistan is the hotbed of al Qaeda, he remarked.
The reason, he told the audience, is that India is a
democracy where everyone has the right to express his or her
views and it does not discriminate on the basis of religion.
"Pakistan had long been and continues to be, a source of
terrorism primarily against India but whose reverberations are
also felt elsewhere," he said, stressing that both India and
the US are threatened by the same source of terrorism.
Narrating the difficulty that India had to make other
nations understand the threat of terrorism before the
September 11, 2001 attacks, Advani said, "What was earlier
dismissed as a tactical nuisance quickly came to be seen as a
strategic threat seeking to undermine the very foundation on
which the American society is built."
Bureau Report
