Pakistan PM’s criticism a travesty, says India at U.N.

India asserted that Pakistan has long employed cross-border terrorism as a weapon against its neighbours

India on Friday termed Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) a “travesty”. It said there could be “no compact with terrorism” and warned that acts of terror would be met with consequences.

“…This assembly regrettably witnessed a travesty this morning —  a country run by the military, with a global reputation for terrorism, narcotics trade and transnational crime, has had the audacity to attack the world’s largest democracy,” First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, Bhavika Mangalanandan said, exercising India’s Right of Reply during the UNGA debate.

Also read | The difficult path to India-Pakistan peace 

Pakistan coveted Indian territory and had used terror to disrupt elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Ms. Mangalanandan said.

Accusing Pakistan of attacking India’s financial capital, its marketplaces and pilgrimage routes, she said cross-border terror would “inevitably invite consequences”.

“A reference has been made to some proposal of Strategic Restraint, there can be no compact with terrorism,” Ms. Mangalanandan said.

In his speech, Mr. Sharif had said Pakistan would respond “most decisively” if India conducted operations across the Line of Control (LoC), accusing the Indian leadership of threatening to cross the LoC and take over Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) . He said India had “thoughtlessly spurned Pakistan’s proposals for a mutual strategic restraint regime” in the nuclear context.

 The Pakistani Prime Minister had accused the government of conducting a “classic settler colonial project” in Jammu & Kashmir,  following its reorganisation by the government on August 5, 2019.

In a segment on Islamophobia, Mr. Sharif had said the “most alarming manifestation of Islamophobia” was the  “Hindu supremacist agenda” in India.

“It is ridiculous that a nation that committed genocide in 1971 and which persecutes its minorities relentlessly, even now, dare speak about intolerances and phobias,” the Indian diplomat said , referring to the war for independence in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Ms. Mangalanandan said Pakistan’s fingerprints were on many global terror incidents and that it had hosted Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (who was killed by U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011).

“We know that Pakistan will seek to counter the truth with more lies. Repetition will change nothing,” Ms. Mangalanandan said.

In its Right of Reply, Pakistan’s response included suggestions that India was conducting “assassinations and attempted murders of political dissidents on North American soil”, a reference to the alleged assassination plot against Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in which the accused are Indian citizens.

Published - September 28, 2024 10:19 am IST