United Nations (United States) (AFP) – India on Saturday warned countries against turning a blind eye to what it called support for terrorism from Pakistan, which has basked in closer relations with US President Donald Trump. Addressing the UN General Assembly a day after Pakistan used the forum to appeal for talks, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar demanded “much deeper global cooperation” against terrorism.
“India has confronted this challenge since independence, having a neighbor that is an epicenter of global terrorism,” Jaishankar said, without saying Pakistan’s name. “For decades now, major international terrorist attacks are traced back to that one country,” he said. “Those who condone nations that sponsor terror will find that it comes back to bite them,” he said, also without naming countries.
India in May launched attacks on military sites in Pakistan after suspected Islamist gunmen massacred tourists, nearly all Hindus, on the Indian side of divided Kashmir. Jaishankar said that India “exercised its right to defend its people against terrorism.” Pakistan denied responsibility.
In his own UN address on Friday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said India showed “arrogance” and received a “bloody nose” with counterattacks. Sharif before the UN summit traveled to Washington to meet alongside Pakistan’s military chief with Trump, who has voiced hope of mediating between India and Pakistan.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has played down Trump’s role in reaching a ceasefire in May and stuck to New Delhi’s refusal of outside mediation on Kashmir. Pakistan, by contrast, has heaped praise on Trump and said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, rekindling Islamabad’s relationship with Washington that had grown tense during the two-decade Afghanistan war.
Trump has ramped up tariffs on India, pointing to its purchases of oil from sanctioned Russia. Jaishankar in his speech said that India will need to correct “overdependence on a particular market.” “We now see tariff volatility and uncertain market access. As a result, de-risking is a growing compulsion,” he said.
© 2024 AFP
