Jaishankar slams Pak over terrorism, says 'you cannot expect snakes in your backyard to only bite neighbours'

Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar told a news conference in Islamabad that no country was better in using terrorism than India

“If you keep snakes in your backyard, you cannot expect they will bite only your neighbours,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday recalled what the then United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had said during her visit to Pakistan in October 2011.

The snakes would eventually bite the people who had kept them in their backyard, Jaishankar went on quoting Clinton, while responding to a question from a journalist on Islamabad’s allegations about New Delhi’s role in orchestrating terrorist attacks in Pakistan. He was interacting with journalists at the United Nations headquarters in New York after a briefing at the Security Council on terrorism.

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Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar on Wednesday told a news conference in Islamabad that no country was better in using terrorism than India. Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, Asad Majeed Khan, also briefed the foreign diplomats based in Islamabad about New Delhi’s alleged role in terrorist strikes in his country. The officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Pakistan on Wednesday shared a dossier with the foreign diplomatic missions based in Islamabad. They claimed that the dossier contained evidences of India’s role in terrorist attacks in Pakistan, particularly the one in front of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba founder Hafiz Saeed’s house in Lahore in June 2021.

Jaishankar recalled that Clinton had Khar on her side when she had warned Islamabad about the risk of nurturing terrorists in Pakistan.

“Pakistan is not great at taking good advice and you can see what is happening there,” he said, adding that the world saw it (Pakistan) as an epicentre and who had the fingerprints on several terrorist attacks in the region and beyond. “At the end of the day, the world is not stupid, the world is not forgetful,” said the external affairs minister, dismissing Pakistan’s allegations against India.