ISLAMABAD: Pakistan lashed out at India on Sunday, saying that New Delhi had “deployed” terrorism as an instrument of state policy in the garb of denouncing terrorism. India, it added, was involved in perpetrating, sponsoring, supporting and financing terrorism.

The remarks came in a statement that Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakarya issued in response to queries regarding reports about the failure of an Indian move in the United Nations sanctions committee.

“Pakistan has been a direct victim of this state-sponsored terrorism by India. The arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a RAW agent and serving officer of the Indian Navy, and his confession ... [of] involvement in terrorist activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan and killing or maiming ... Pakistani citizens, is yet another proof of Indian-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan,” he said.

With such “duplicitous behaviour and blood on its hands”, India has little credibility on counterterrorism, the spokesman said. In coming days, Pakistan will share with the United Nations and members of the international community additional evidence of Indian involvement in terrorism in Pakistan, he added.

The official said that the Indian proposal at the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee was politically motivated and replete with frivolous information.

Additional evidence of Indian involvement in terrorism will be shared with UN

“The 1,267 Sanctions Committee, related to ISIS/Al Qaeda, has rejected a politically motivated proposal by India. Replete with frivolous information and baseless allegations, the Indian proposal had no merit and was primarily aimed at advancing its narrow national agenda,” the FO said.

India had proposed to the UN committee to add the name of Maulana Masood Azhar, head of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad organisation, to the Security Council’s blacklist of groups linked to Al Qaeda.

The FO spokesman termed the dismissal of the proposal a rejection of Indian attempts to politicise and undermine the work of the Security Council’s committee.

He said it was clear that New Delhi’s unfounded allegations were in fact aimed at masking its own terrorist activities in Pakistan.

India also wanted to divert the international community’s attention from grave human rights violations and state-sponsored terrorism perpetrated by its forces in held Jammu and Kashmir, where people have been peacefully demanding their right to self-determination, which, he recalled, was promised to them by the UN and the international community.

The spokesman reiterated that Pakistan had made significant contributions and rendered enormous sacrifices to the success of the international community’s counterterrorism efforts.

“We are deeply committed to this common cause and look forward to continuing close cooperation with the international community in this collective endeavour,” he remarked.

In a separate statement, the FO condemned the terrorist attack at a nightclub in Istanbul on the eve of the New Year and noted with deep anguish that “terror and tragedy have struck brotherly Turkey again”.

“Pakistan condemns in the strongest possible terms the heinous terrorist attack that took place at a nightclub in Ortakoy area of Besiktas district in Istanbul,” it said.

Published in Dawn January 2nd, 2017