Taking into account the action taken so far by Pakistan against militants responsible for Mumbai terrorist strikes as insufficient, India on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to declare Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the public figure of Pakistan based Lashkar-e-Toiba, a terrorist organisation and proscribe the outfit.
Minister of state for External Affairs, E. Ahamed, firmly told UNSC and urged the international community to put pressure on Pakistan to act tough against terrorism from where the terrorist attack emanated and was planned.
Referring UN charter that recognised the right of self-defence, Ahamed said failing to take urgent steps to stop militants’ functioning and bring them to justice by Pakistan would force India “to do everything to protect its citizens from such heinous attacks however long and difficult that task may be.”
The Jamaat-ud-Dawa and other such organisations need to be banned internationally and effective sanctions imposed against them,” Ahamed told the 15-member Security Council, which held a debate on ‘Threats to international peace and security cause by terrorists’ in New York.
It is to mention here that Lashkar-e-Toiba had started working under the name of Jamaat-ud-Dawa after it was outlawed in 2002. India and US have said that LeT and its leaders were involved in the Mumbai terror strikes. The sole gunman arrested in the Mumbai attacks, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, has also told Indian authorities that he is a LeT member.
Ahmed also called for India’s 12-year-old Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, which India tabled in 1996, needs to be adopted without delay to provide a framework of international law against terrorism.
He appealed the international body should not be remain passive while terrorists continue to take innocent lives.
Stressing that India has been victim of terrorist attacks, which now has marked a qualitatively new and dangerous escalation after Mumbai carnage, sponsored from across the border for the last two decades, Ahamed said without mentioning the name of Pakistan that ‘when terrorist groups are used to serve the political interest of States, a deadly combination emerges and a terror machine is created.’
The organisers, financers and logistic providers of these terrorist attacks need to be punished along with those who give ideological and moral support to this evil phenomenon must also be brought to justice, he asserted.
Addressing a special meeting of the UN Security Council, the US urged the countries to deny terrorists sanctuaries and bring to justice all those who orchestrate and fund these evil acts.
Issuing prompt warning to countries not to provide safe heaven to terrorists, US President George W Bush said, “We have made clear that governments that sponsor terror are as guilty as the terrorists and will be held to account.”
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon asserted that the outrageous attacks on Mumbai are only the recent example of "mad, misguided individuals run amok".
|
|
Read More: Mumbai
Comments:
