New Delhi: Reacting to the Pakistan Foreign Office’s contention that the external affairs ministry was using the UN report to “slander Pakistan”, India on Friday said that the UN Security Council’s analytical support and sanctions monitoring team had only reiterated what Khan “has already confessed”.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan would do well to recall that their Prime Minister admitted last year that Pakistan still hosts 30,000 to 40,000 terrorists. Pakistan’s leadership is also on record acknowledging that in the past terrorists had used the country's soil to carry out terror attacks on other countries,” the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said in a statement.
Speaking at the US Institute of Peace in Washington last July, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had said Pakistan still has “about 30,000 to 40,000 armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir”.
The UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team Report has only reiterated what the Prime Minister of Pakistan has already confessed, the spokesperson added.
Instead of casting aspersions on the Report, Pakistan should introspect and put an end to any kind of support for terrorism emanating from territories under its control, he added.
The UN and the international community is well acquainted with the reality that Pakistan is the nerve center of terrorism. It houses one of the largest numbers of UN designated terrorists and terrorist entities. Its fallacious attempts to point fingers at others cannot deflect attention from the facts on the ground, the spokesperson said.
“Moreover, Pakistan’s attempts to create a divide in the traditional and friendly relations between the people of India and Afghanistan will not succeed. The people of Afghanistan and the international community are well aware of who the ‘spoiler’ is, and who is sheltering, training, arming and financing terrorists and sponsoring violence against innocent Afghans and members of the international community,”he said.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office had contended the external affairs ministry had misrepresented the UN report to slander Pakistan.
“Pakistan categorically rejects India’s malicious allegations, which are aimed at misleading the international community,” it said.
