ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Wednesday shared a dossier containing undeniable and solid evidence of India’s state-sponsored terrorism against Pakistan with Islamabad-based diplomatic corps, including envoys from Permanent-5 (P-5) members of the UN Security Council and urged the international community to hold India accountable for its crimes.
Briefing media persons about the dossier, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar said that Foreign Secretary Dr Asad Majeed Khan briefed diplomatic missions based in Islamabad on state-sponsored terrorism against Pakistan - planned, conducted, and financed by India. She said that the foreign secretary shared a dossier of Indian involvement in last year’s terrorist attack in Lahore and asked the international community to hold India accountable for its crimes.
She added that the dossier will also be shared with the UN secretary general, adding that Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is already in the US and he will also take up the matter in his meetings with the US authorities as well as the UN high-ups.
“This dossier has details, the evidence of how India has been found to be fully behind this particular [Jauhar Town] incident which led to the loss of lives. And we do not, unlike our neighbours, go the next day and blame one country or the other. We waited till we had strong hard evidence to be making the case we are making today,” she added.
Responding to a question, she said that it is not true that Pakistan is not heard in Washington or anywhere else about its narrative about India’s involvement in terrorism, adding that Pakistan had also shared similar dossiers in the past with the world community, “but this time around, the dossier on the last year Lahore bomb attack has even stronger and undeniable evidence of India’s state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan.”
“No country has used terrorism better than India...To play on the back of the attention of the world on terrorism and to play the victim, no country has benefitted from it better than India,” Khar said, adding that India’s objective is to undermine Pakistan’s peace and security through terrorism.
Earlier on Tuesday, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told a media briefing that the government of Pakistan has “undeniable” evidence of India’s involvement in last year’s bomb attack in Jauhar Town in Lahore near Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed’s residence, in which, he claimed the JuD chief was the target.
“India is portraying itself as a champion of counter-terrorism even though it hasn’t made any contributions in this regard and paid only lip service…If you compare Pakistan and India, you will find Pakistan always to be at the forefront of counter-terrorism, of ensuring that we are a player in the world to try and make sure terrorism does not continue to haunt us,” Khar further said.
She said that terrorism has posed a serious threat to peace, adding that Pakistan had been at the receiving end of this scourge since long. Instead of talking about terrorism, Khar said that she wished she could talk as to how South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is prospering and how regional connectivity is happening. “We’re at a unique place where perpetrators of terrorism are projecting themselves to be the greatest victims of terrorism,” she said in reference to India.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022