In an angry speech before the UN General Assembly, Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj accused neighbouring country Pakistan for harboring terrorists and rejected the notion that India is sabotaging peace talks with Pakistan, calling it “a complete lie”. She pointed to the fact that Osama bin Laden had been living quietly in Pakistan before he was found and killed by a team of US Navy SEALs, and said the mastermind of the 2008 attack in Mumbai in which 168 people died “still roams the streets of Pakistan with impunity.”
She said, “In our case, terrorism is bred not in some faraway land, but across our border to the west. Our neighbour's expertise is not restricted to spawning grounds for terrorism, it is also an expert in trying to mask malevolence with verbal duplicity.” Swaraj was supposed to meet Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this week. However, India called it off just one day after it was announced, when an Indian border guard was killed in the disputed region of Kashmir.
The announcement was considered as a positive step towards restarting stalled talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours. After newly-elected Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan wrote to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, stressing the need for positive change, a mutual desire for peace and a readiness to discuss terrorism, New Delhi had agreed to hold the meeting.
“We accepted the proposal. But within hours of our acceptance, news came that terrorists had killed one of our jawans. Does this intricate a desire for dialogue?” Also present, Pakistan's Qureshi responded to Swaraj's statement saying it was the third time the current Indian administration had called off talks. “Each time on flimsy grounds,” he said. In his speech, he said that “Pakistan continues to face terrorism that its financed, facilitated and orchestrated by our eastern neighbour.”
Calling Pakistan a country that glorifies killers, Sushma said, "Time and again, Pakistan accuses India of human rights violations. Who can be a greater transgressor of human rights than a terrorist? Those who take innocent human lives in pursuit of war by other means are defenders of inhuman behaviour, not of human rights. Pakistan glorifies killers; it refuses to see the blood of innocents."
Hitting hard at Islamabad for showing a fake photo at the UN, she said that it has become a habit of Pakistan to "throw the dust of deceit and deception against India". She said, "Last year, Pakistan’s representative, using her right to reply, displayed some photographs as proof of human rights violations by India. The photographs turned out to be from another country. Similar false accusations have become a part of its standard rhetoric."Qureshi's speech prompted a vehement response from India, which exercised its right of reply at the end of the daylong meeting and accused Pakistan of spreading “fake allegations and fake facts.” Pakistan, in turn, responded by accusing India of “practicing terrorism as an instrument of state policy.”
