UNITED NATIONS: Islamabad called on the UN Security Council to hold accountable the “masterminds” behind supporting, financing, and sponsoring hundreds of cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistan.
Umer Siddique, a counselor at the diplomatic mission to the UN, said it was also “essential” that Afghanistan’s territory was not used as a platform or a safe haven by militant groups.
“We trust the new authorities in Afghanistan will succeed in ensuring this in accordance with their commitments,” he said in his address to the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC).
It was the first open briefing on the work of agency after India assumed its chairmanship in January.
While in the past, the focus of such meetings had been on exchanging views on best practices, capacity building and technical cooperation in countering terrorism, diplomatic observers took note of India’s move to turn the meeting into a venue for casting negative aspersions on Pakistan, contravening the norms of behaviour by Security Council committees’ chairpersons.
Delivering India’s statement, Rajesh Parihar, a counselor at the Indian mission, said the world had witnessed the horrors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and the purported 2016 and 2019 attacks in Pathankot and Pulwama, respectively.
“We all know from where the perpetrators of these attacks came from,” he declared.
Rejecting the Indian insinuations, Siddique said Pakistan provided irrefutable evidence to the 15-member Security Council on external sponsorship of cross-border terrorism against it, and, in reference to India, added: “We all know who has been supporting and financing” terror groups such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA).
Drawing attention to the gross rights violations by Indian forces in occupied Kashmir, he called for preventing the misuse of counter-terror norms to deny the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination under foreign occupation.
Referring to India’s bid to politicise UN bodies, the representative said: “We must not allow the hijacking of technical bodies such as this to serve bilateral programmes of hate and aggression.”
He also called out India for opposing UN initiates to address the rising number of attacks directed against Muslims based on the notions of Islamophobia, pointing out it was “only those giving state patronage to mainstream Islamophobia in their domestic political discourse as manifested by calls of genocide against Muslims, who were opposing such initiatives”.
In this context, Siddiqui welcomed the recognition of threats arising from xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance by the Security Council and called for greater focus on the issue.
After the meeting, several diplomats expressed serious concern at India’s attempt to use the occasion to push its domestic agenda which they believe was detrimental to the credibility of the UN body.
They voiced apprehensions that India’s chairmanship would undermine the work of the committee for “bilateralising” its work and compromising its impartiality.
“Our worst fears have been realised today,” a UN diplomat commented on the condition of anonymity.
“It is quite unprecedented. The biggest casualty of such an approach will be the trust in the UN mechanisms,” she said.
