NEW DELHI: 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.
“The mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks Sajid Mir was listed as a proscribed terrorist under the national laws of India, of the United States, and of several other countries. But when the proposal for listing Sajid 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 MEA.
He was speaking at a high-level United Nations (UN) conference on counter-terrorism.
“If we cannot get established terrorists who have been banned across global landscapes proscribed by the United Nations – for petty geopolitical interests – then 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 vs bad terrorists”.
“A terror act is a terror act, period. Any justification being used should not be countenanced upon by anybody,” he added.
India, he said, wanted the UN sanctions regime to devise methods to “secure the successful listing of genuine and evidence-based objective listing proposals”.