New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi to state whether terrorism in India will end since Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar has been declared a global terrorist by the UN Security Council. “We want terrorism to end,” he said, demanding that Pakistan be declared as a “terrorist state” and wanting the Prime Minister to promise this to the country.
The former Union Minister questioned why Modi was “taking credit” for JeM chief’s listing as a global terrorist by the UNSC and said the Prime Minister should instead “apologise” to the country on behalf of his party as it was the previous BJP government which had set Azhar free and “delivered” him “to Pakistan” following the hijack of Indian Airlines plane IC-814 in 1999.
Azhar was listed as a global terrorist by UNSC’s 1267 Sanctions Committee on May 1. “How is it the success of Modi? It is the success of Indian diplomacy with the support of international community,” Sibal told IANS.
He said after 26/11, on December 11, 2008, Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed was declared a terrorist along with some other top Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT) commanders like Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi and Mohd Ashraf. “Did we take credit? Was it because of (the then Prime Minister) Dr Manmohan Singh? No. It’s the success of our international diplomacy,” said Sibal, who was a minister then.
