India reacted strongly to yet another hold put by China on its joint proposal with the US to designate as global terrorist LeT commander and Mumbai attacks mastermind Sajid Mir, who is stated to be serving a jail sentence in Pakistan for similar crimes.
“Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Sajid Mir was listed as a proscribed terrorist under the national laws of India, of the United States and of several other countries. However, when the proposal for listing Mir did not get through the global listings of the UNSC sanctions regime despite several member states co-sponsoring it, we have righteous reasons to believe that something is genuinely wrong with the global counter-terrorism architecture,” said Prakash Gupta, Joint Secretary, UN (Political), at the MEA. He was speaking at a high-level UN conference on counter-terrorism. “If we cannot get established terrorists who have been banned across global landscapes proscribed by the United Nations ndash; for petty geopolitical interests ndash;we really do not have the genuine political will to sincerely fight this challenge of terrorism,” said Gupta while urging UNSC members to “avoid double standards and this self-defeating justification of good terrorists versus bad terrorists”.
India, he said, wanted the UN sanctions regime to devise methods to “secure the successful listing of genuine and evidence-based objective listing proposals”.
“Can we allow for submission of proposals under the garb of anonymity? Should we not be owning up to serious proposals that are being moved for the consideration of the entire UNSC membership,” he asked.