Author: K.P. Nayar
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: September 14, 2002
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1020914/asp/frontpage/story_1198541.asp
With the world adopting India's
long-standing agenda of the fight against terrorism, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
today asked the General Assembly to take the next logical step: use the
instruments of the UN to act against "states known to be sponsoring, sheltering,
funding, arming and training terrorists".
Addressing the General Assembly
in Hindi, the Prime Minister said the UN's Committee on Counter-Terrorism
should move beyond compiling information to enforcing compliance by states
of their commitments not to harbour or train terrorists.
The Prime Minister also turned the
tables on those who have been crying wolf about an imminent nuclear war
in South Asia, accusing Pakistan of using nuclear blackmail as an instrument
of state terrorism.
"In our South Asian region, nuclear
blackmail has emerged over the last few months as a new arrow in the quiver
of state-sponsored terrorism. Dark threats were held out that actions by
India to stamp out cross-border terrorism could provoke a nuclear war.
To succumb to such blatant nuclear terrorism would mean forgetting the
bitter lessons of the September 11 tragedy," Vajpayee told world leaders
gathered here.
He made it clear that while no one
in India wants war, the country was determined to end cross-border terrorism
"with all the means at our command. Let there be no doubt about it in any
quarter".
The Prime Minister appears to have
been encouraged in making such an unequivocal statement by his meeting
with President George W. Bush yesterday.
At that meeting, which took place
a few hours after Musharraf attempted to portray violence in Kashmir as
the result of a freedom struggle, Bush told the Prime Minister that there
could be no alibis for terror. The US President later conveyed the same
message to Musharraf at their bilateral meeting.
Vajpayee surprised delegates to
the General Assembly by devoting more time than any Prime Minister in recent
memory to Pakistan, rebutting Musharraf's allegations of a massacre of
Muslims in Gujarat and references to Hindu militancy elsewhere in the country.
"Yesterday, we heard yet another
patently false and self-serving claim that in India, Muslims and other
minorities are the target of Hindu extremists. With 150 million, India
has the second largest Muslims population in the world, more than in Pakistan,"
Vajpayee reminded world leaders. "We are proud of the multi-religious character
of our society."
Vajpayee accused Musharraf of "adjusting"
voting and counting procedures and achieving constitutional authority by
simply rewriting Pakistan's constitution. The unexpectedly strong attack
on Musharraf's version of democracy is seen as a reply to the general's
very public campaign here throughout the week against the poll process
in Jammu and Kashmir.
