Govt scrambles to bring JeM chief under UN sanctions

With quite a few phases of polling for the Lok Sabha elections yet to go, the government is making a last-ditch attempt to make China stop blocking initiatives by India and other nations to impose United Nations sanctions on terrorist leader Masood Azhar.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale met his counterpart and China's Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou as well as the communist country's Executive Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng in Beijing on Monday. He also called on Chinese Foreign Minister and National Security Advisor Wang Yi.

Gokhale raised the issue of getting United Nation designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist affiliated with Al Qaeda and Taliban. He reiterated India's oft-repeated call to China to drop its policy of shielding Azhar and other terrorist leaders based in Pakistan from international sanctions.

“We have shared with China all evidence of terrorist activities of Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Masood Azhar,” Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said in New Delhi after Foreign Secretary called on Foreign Minister of China and met his counterparts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chinese Government in Beijing.

“It is now for the 1267 Sanctions Committee (of the Security Council) and other authorized bodies of the UN to take a decision on the listing of Masood Azhar,” said Kumar.

If New Delhi could nudge Beijing to lift the “technical hold” it imposed on the latest proposal at the UNSC to impose global sanctions on Azhar, it might give the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a shot in the arm ahead of the next phases of polling for the Lok Sabha elections.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been harping on his government's “achievement” on national security front – particularly in combating cross-border terrorism coming from Pakistan to India – in his speeches at the election rallies across the country.

The Opposition Congress, however, targeted the BJP-led government headed by Modi over New Delhi's failure to make Beijing change its policy of shielding terrorists based in Pakistan from UN sanctions – despite the thaw in India-China relations in 2018 and the personal bonhomie between Prime Minister and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“ India will continue to pursue all available avenues to ensure that terrorist leaders who are involved in heinous attacks on our citizens are brought to justice,” the MEA spokesperson said in New Delhi.

Azhar lives at Bahawalpur in Pakistan.

The JeM has been using its seminaries and training facilities in Pakistan to radicalize youths, recruit them into its ranks and send them to carry out terrorist attacks in India.

China has been routinely shielding Azhar and other terrorist leaders based in Pakistan from United Nations sanctions, ostensibly to save its “all-weather friend” from embarrassment.