United Nations: India has denounced Pakistan's attempt to equate terrorists with freedom-fighters while raising the Kashmir issue at the Non-Aligned Movement's (NAM) ministerial meeting. "NAM needs to be in the vanguard of those addressing the primary issues of our times that cry for global cooperation, rather than become a platform for venting bilateral grievances between members," Syed Akbaruddin, India's Permanent Representative, told the meeting in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Sunday.
While reacting to the statement by Andleeb Abbas, Pakistan's Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on Kashmir and terrorism at the conference he did not mention her or her country by name, but it was clear from the context who his remarks were directed at. "That no other member is responsive to such a self-serving narrative is a telling rejoinder that NAM never was and never can be a platform for pursuits aimed at undermining the territorial integrity of a State by another State," Akbaruddin said.
In dealing with terrorism, he said: "We, as NAM countries, need to take the lead as it is our citizens that stand to lose the most from the lack of coordinated and coherent responses." Defending the anti-India terrorists operating from Pakistan, Abbas had asserted that NAM had rejected "attempts by some countries to equate freedom struggles of people under foreign occupation with terrorism". She was apparently referring to a statement adopted at the 2006 NAM summit in Havana, Cuba.
- Arul Louis
