Islamabad should give up selective approach to terrorism, says Delhi

India on Monday condemned the deadly terror attack at Wagah in Pakistan, but asked the neighbouring country to learn the lesson and give up its selective approach in combating terrorism. 

A day after at least 61 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few hundred metres away from the India-Pakistan border at Wagah-Attari, New Delhi condemned the incident, but also underscored that no grievance or political goal could justify terrorism.

New Delhi’s statement is apparently intended to once again dismiss the “root-cause theory” Islamabad has propped up several times in the past to justify its tacit or relative inaction against terrorism targeting India.

“There is no grievance or political goal so great as to justify such a cowardly act,” said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a statement issued on Monday.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had recently told an international conference in New Delhi that Pakistan blocked the negotiation for Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the United Nations by suggesting that so-called “freedom fighters” should be excluded from the definition of terrorists, although India and many other nations believed that whatever might be the cause or objective, use of terror as a means to achieve an end could not be accepted.

In the past, too, Islamabad had sought to justify anti-India terrorism in Kashmir by suggesting that New Delhi should first address the “root cause” to address the menace.

“We believe that only the firmest and most comprehensive action against all terror groups without any distinction is the only way to defeat this evil scourge,” said the MEA in the statement issued in New Delhi on Monday.

The statement is in line with New Delhi’s allegation that although the Pakistani Army claims to be fighting militants on its western frontier, Islamabad largely overlooks and thus tacitly supports the anti-India terror machinery operating along its eastern border.    
“Our prayers will remain with the families of the victims, who we hope will be granted the courage and fortitude to overcome this irreparable loss,” added the MEA statement.
DH News Service