Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Friday criticized Pakistan for portraying itself as a victim of terror while reluctantly acknowledging the presence of wanted terrorists and crime leaders on its territory due to sustained international pressure.
Jaishankar did not directly name Pakistan in his comments while presiding over the Darbari Seth memorial conference. He described the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the Covid-19 pandemic as “salient moments that disrupted the trajectory of human society.”
Nineteen years after the September 11 attacks and 12 years since the Mumbai attacks of 2008, the world has a variety of mechanisms to counter terrorism, including the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), various sanctions committees from the UN and the Executive Directorate for the Fight against Terrorism. said. However, it lacks a comprehensive convention on international terrorism, as UN members are still “struggling with certain fundamental principles,” he added.
“Meanwhile, states that have made terrorist production a primary export have tried, by dint of mild denials, to paint themselves as victims of terror as well,” said Jaishankar, a clear reference to the use of terrorism by Pakistan as an instrument. of state policy.
“But as we saw last week, sustained pressure through international mechanisms to prevent the movement of funds for terrorist groups and their front agencies can work. It has eventually forced a state complicit in aiding, inciting, training and leading terrorist groups and associated criminal syndicates to grudgingly acknowledge the presence of wanted terrorists and organized crime leaders on its territory, ”he said.
Weeks before an expected assessment of Pakistan’s terrorist financing regime, Islamabad issued two notifications on August 18 to enforce UN Security Council sanctions against hundreds of terrorist individuals and entities, including the founder of Lashkar-e. -Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed Chief Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim. One of the documents listed three addresses in Karachi for Ibrahim, wanted by India for his role in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.
After the issue was widely reported in the Indian media, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the notifications do not amount to “Pakistan admitting the presence of certain listed individuals on its territory.”
Jaishankar acknowledged that “the fight against terrorism and those who help and instigate it is a work in progress.” He said: “It is left to the international system to create the necessary mechanisms to close the structures that support and allow terrorism, whether in South Asia or around the world.”
The world, he said, also faces a structural challenge to improve the global architecture used to fight pandemics. In similar crises over the past century, outbreaks occurred in remote locations or monitoring systems managed to avoid a crisis. “This time, however, international alert systems, notification protocols and response mechanisms could not prevent the spread beyond ground zero,” he said.
This has highlighted the need for a more enlightened and responsive multilateral system, and a “new, inclusive and non-transactional approach to multilateralism,” he said. “The reform of international organizations is not simply desirable but imperative. We need to modernize the international system, step by step, to adapt it to its purpose, starting by making each entity relevant to the time in which we live, not when it was created, “he added.
This will require reviewing the membership and control structures, reorienting operational principles and rules, and rebuilding the resource channels of the key pillars of multilateralism, said Jaishankar.
Strengthening skill sets and creating a better enabling environment are the goals of the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” campaign, as India can make a difference globally only by increasing its capabilities, he said.
The spirit of local action for global results is reflected in India’s work with France to create the International Solar Alliance, whose framework agreement has so far been ratified by 67 countries, and the launch of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, Jaishankar said.
The commemorative lecture was delivered by UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, who said that India has all the ingredients to exert leadership at home and abroad. He added that the drivers are poverty alleviation and universal access to energy, two of India’s top priorities.
“Expanding clean energy, particularly solar, is the recipe for solving both. Investments in renewable energy, clean transportation and energy efficiency during the pandemic recovery could extend access to electricity to 270 million people around the world, a third of the people who currently lack it, ”he said. She added: “These same investments could help create nine million jobs a year for the next three years.”
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