Shashi Tharoor has said that Islamabad continues to provide a safe haven for terrorists in its largest province
Pakistan’s denial that it sponsors terrorism in South Asia cannot be taken seriously, Indian member of parliament Shashi Tharoor has said.
In an exclusive interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez on Tuesday, Tharoor, who is also the head of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs, said Islamabad continues to provide a safe haven for terrorists in its largest province and allows them to freely operate camps for weapons training. Since the end of the Cold War, Pakistan had made “too many denials” about their involvement in terrorism, Tharoor said.
”Ever since the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan there were a lot of unemployed radicals around whom the Pakistanis decided to turn on us on the one side, and later on Afghanistan,” he told Sanchez. “The truth of the matter is the ones who have turned against us were trained, armed, equipped, financed, guided from Pakistan.”
The Indian MP mentioned the example of the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, where he said American and European intelligence recorded the “chilling voice” of a Pakistani handler giving “minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow” directions to the killers. “It is very difficult for us to take Pakistani denials seriously,” Tharoor said.
The lawmaker’s comments come almost six weeks after the two South Asian nations were involved in a four-day military confrontation. Tharoor told Sanchez the conflict in May was about “India versus terrorism,” and that New Delhi initially did not hit military, government, or civilian targets in Pakistan, but only attacked suspected terror facilities. He added that a country that gets hit by terror has to hit back.
Earlier this month, Sharoor headed a delegation to the Americas as part of an outreach in which New Delhi sent seven teams to over 30 countries to counter what it perceived as poor media coverage regarding the confrontation with Islamabad.
Addressing the National Press Club in Washington DC, Tharoor emphasized that India was not opposed to talking to Pakistan, but it refused to do so under duress. Tharoor told RT during his interview on Tuesday that de-escalation efforts in the Israel-Iran conflict seemed to be working. “If we can have the ceasefire hold, we can all wake up tomorrow morning and find that Israel has now announced that it is reopening flights to Tel Aviv and that there’s peace in Tehran, then I think that people will be grateful.”
