India on Wednesday ripped into China after it blocked a proposal at the United Nations to label Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Sajid Mir – wanted for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks – a ‘global terrorist’.
India and the United States had jointly moved the proposal to blacklist Sajid Mir under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council as a global terrorist and subject him to an assets freeze, a travel ban and an arms embargo.
In a sharply-worded response at a high-level conference, India said, “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…”
Prakash Gupta, Joint Secretary, UN Political at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), while addressing the United Nations’ counter-terror meeting, further said, “India has righteous reasons to believe something is genuinely wrong with the global counter-terrorism architecture.”
Also Read: Caught between the US & China
“Ten fully armed assailants from across our borders… descended on our shores and wreaked havoc over three days… resulted in 166 innocents being killed, including 26 foreign nationals,” India said, noting that the UN Security Council – the global organisation’s highest decision-making body – had visited Mumbai in October last year and paid “collective homage at the site of the attacks… but regretfully justice continues to elude the victims…”
Sajid Mir is one of India’s most wanted terrorists and has a US bounty of $ 5 million on his head for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, in which 166 people were killed.
Last year, India played an audio clip at a UN meet in Mumbai as proof of Mir’s involvement. In the clip, Mir is heard directing the attack on Chabad House, one of the terror targets in the Mumbai attack.
Also Read: Are India-China Relations moving towards a point of ‘no return’?
In today’s statement, India played the clip again. “Please listen to this sound file recorded even as the terror attacks were unfolding. This is SAJID MIR – directing the terrorists – on the phone – to hunt down foreigners at the Taj Hotel and kill them indiscriminately.”
The top diplomat from India further said, “The first and most crucial gap – we feel addressing is: avoiding double standards and this self-defeating justification of ‘good terrorist v bad terrorist’. A terror act is a terror act - period – (and) any justification being used should not be countenanced by anybody.”
In September last year, it was learnt that China had put a hold on the proposal to designate Mir at the UN. It has now blocked it.