UNITED NATIONS, June 21:
India has hit out at China for blocking a move to designate Pakistan-based LeT leader Sajid Mir as a “global terrorist” by the UN, saying it shows a lack of genuine political will to fight the scourge of terrorism.
China on Tuesday blocked a proposal moved by the US and co-designated by India to blacklist Mir under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as a global terrorist and subject him to assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorist Mir is wanted for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
In a strongly-worded statement, Joint Secretary at India’s permanent mission in New York Prakash Gupta said on Tuesday if efforts to ban terrorists fail due to “petty geopolitical interests, then we really do not have the genuine political will to sincerely fight this challenge of terrorism”.
“The first and most critical gap we feel addressing is avoiding double standards, and this self-defeating justification of good terrorists versus bad terrorists. A terror act is a terror act, plain and simple. Any justification of any kind being used should not be countenanced by anybody,” he said at United Nation’s counter-terror meeting.
In this day and age of accountability and transparency, can evidence-based listing proposals be blocked without giving any reason? Gupta asked.
He said India has fought against terrorists in practically real-time on a daily basis.
“While the 9/11 terror bombings in this iconic city of New York had changed the landscape of the global counterterrorism architecture, the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks shook the collective conscience of the world’s largest democracy,” he said.
Gupta also played an audio clip of Mir in which he can be heard instructing terrorists from Pakistan during the Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks.(PTI)
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