Uri Aftermath: Pakistan’s diplomatic strategy fails at UN

India claimed diplomatic victory over Pakistan on Thursday at the United Nations amid deteriorating bilateral ties following the killing of 18 soldiers in a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters that India was ‘sensitising the world’ about how Pakistan was sponsoring terrorism.

“Our actions speak for themselves and you can see our actions are already delivering results,” Swarup said, a day after Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif aggressively raised the Kashmir issue in his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York.

The spokesperson said most countries have condemned Sunday’s terror attack at Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.

“No one, and I mean no other country, at the UN has spoken on the subject Nawaz Sharif devoted 80 per cent of his time to,” Swarup said.

He said that, on the contrary, virtually every country has referred to terrorism as the main threat to international peace and security, a fact that Pakistan still remains in denial of.

“Four of the five members of the Security Council have also spoken and their statements are also available for everyone to see,” the MEA spokesperson added.

About Pakistan submitting a dossier against India to the UN, Swarup said there was no mention of such thing in the read-out given by the Secretary General’s Office.

“It makes no mention of the dossier. It does not talk about the Secretary General wanting to intervene in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the Secretary General has very wisely said that this issue needs to be settled bilaterally,” Swarup said, adding that in addition there have been a flurry of bilateral statements issued in all the major world capitals condemning the Uri terror attack in the strongest terms.

“So, I think this itself makes very clear how successful Pakistan’s diplomatic strategy has been,” he added.

Asserting that the onus now is squarely on Pakistan to act against terrorist groups and entities which find safe haven in Pakistan, he said the country must dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism if it has to become a responsible member of the comity of nations.

India has said the militants who attacked the military base had come from Pakistan and belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), headed by Masood Azhar – the militant commander released in exchange for passengers of an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Afghanistan in December 1999.

Asked if India was preparing any fresh dossier on Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist activities, Swarup said: “We don’t need a dossier; the whole world is aware of Pakistan’s role in promoting terror.”

With IANS inputs