Author: Times News Network
Publications: The Times of India
Dated: September 13, 2001
New Delhi: Condemning terrorist
strikes in the US as "an attack on the entire humanity," home minister
L K Advani on Wednesday said, "never before have so many innocent civilians
been made the target of annihilation and with such impunity."
"Yesterday's incidents have vindicated
what we in India have been saying for a long time - that terrorism has
emerged as a threat not just to this country, or that, but as a global
threat. Because the danger it poses is global, the response to it
also has to be global," Mr. Advani told newspersons here.
He said the time has come for all
democratic countries to unite and combat "more effectively" the challenge
posed by terrorism. "This is not madness. After a great deal of thinking,
the terrorists chose the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the State
Department as targets. Terrorism has been used as a political weapon and
the attacks were part of a well-planned conspiracy," Mr. Advani said.
Asked how India could assist the
US in investigating the strikes, Mr. Advani said, "We will wait for the
steps taken by the US to deal with the unprecedented episode." External
affairs minister Jaswant Singh spoke to the US authorities on telephone
on Tuesday night, the home minister said, and added New Delhi and Washington
were co-operating in combating the menace through an Indo-US joint working
group on terrorism. For India, Mr. Advani said, the biggest challenge
was cross-border terrorism. "Since the time the NDA came to power three-and-a-half-years
back, the government has been working with democracies and civilised societies
the world over to jointly combat the challenge posed by terrorism."
He said while watching the horrendous
attacks on the television, he recalled the serial bomb blasts after the
1993 Mumbai riots when the stock exchange was targetted. "Nobody
will be able to forget the attacks on the US. In Jammu and Kashmir
over 10,000 innocent people have been killed since 1989 but I will not
be surprised if the toll in the strikes in New York, Washington and other
places in a day is more than that," he said.
