External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday that since Independence, India has confronted the challenge of “having a neighbour that is an epicentre of global terrorism”. Addressing the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, he said that major international terrorist attacks are traced back to “that one country” for decades now, referring to Pakistan.
“The most recent example of cross-border barbarism was the murder of innocent tourists in Pahalgam in April this year,” said Jaishankar, adding: “India exercised its right to defend its people against terrorism and brought its organisers and perpetrators to justice.”
He was referring to India’s Operation Sindoor earlier this year when the Indian Armed Forces targeted and destroyed terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir with precision, in connection with a terror attack near Pahalgam in J&K that killed 26 civilians.
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Here are key takeaways from his speech:
- Countering terrorism is a particular priority because it synthesises bigotry, violence, intolerance and fear
- While asserting our rights, we must also firmly face up to threats
- UN’s designated lists of terrorists are replete with its nationals
- Terrorism is a shared threat; it is essential that there is much deeper international cooperation
- When nations openly declare terrorism a state policy, when terror hubs operate on an industrial scale, when terrorists are publicly glorified, then such actions must be unequivocally condemned
- The financing of terrorism must be choked even as prominent terrorists are sanctioned
- Relentless pressure must be applied on the entire terrorism ecosystem
- Those who condone nations that sponsor terror will find that it comes back to bite them
Earlier on Saturday, Petal Gahlot, First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, delivered a strong rebuttal after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accused India of “unprovoked aggression” during his speech at the assembly. Read more
“No degree of drama and no level of lies can conceal the facts,” said the Indian diplomat, opening her three and a half minutes-long speech by describing the Pakistan leader’s address as “absurd theatrics”.
She also said that Sharif “once again glorified terrorism that is so central to their (Pakistan’s) foreign policy”.
“This is the very same Pakistan which, at the UN Security Council on 25 April 2025, shielded ‘The Resistance Front’, a Pakistani sponsored terror outfit, from the responsibility of carrying out the barbaric massacre of tourists in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” Gahlot said.
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