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No Equivalence Between Terrorism Sponsors and Democracies: Shashi Tharoor News24 –

National
By Correspondent


Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said, “There is no equivalence between a country that provides a safe haven to terrorism and a country that’s a flourishing multi-party democracy that’s trying to get on with its business.”

When asked if it is helpful to have the United States available as a mediator, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, “Mediation is not a term that we are particularly willing to entertain. You’re implying an equivalence which simply doesn’t exist. There is no equivalence between terrorists and their victims. There is no equivalence between a country that provides a safe haven to terrorism and a country that’s a flourishing multi-party democracy that’s trying to get on with its business…My government received a number of calls at high levels from the US government and we appreciated their concern and their interest. At the same time, they must have been making similar calls at the highest levels to the Pakistan side. Because that’s the side that needed persuading to stop this process, that may well have been where their messages really had the greatest effect. But that’s guesswork on my part. I don’t know what they said to the Pakistanis.”

Shashi Tharoor further said, “We hit terror bases. There are no terror bases in India to hit. There are no terrorist organisations in India listed in the UN or the State Department anywhere else. So, what do you hit? You hit civilians, innocent people. That is the asymmetry of this particular conflict. We have tried not just to be precise and calibrated in our response, but we have tried systematically to signal we are not interested in war with Pakistan. We’re not interested in attacking Pakistani civilians, ordinary people. This is about India versus terrorism.”

When asked if India is well placed against Chinese technology or is there a re-evaluation going on, the Congress MP said, “When we saw what the Pakistanis were tempting to do using, as you say, Chinese technology, there’s supposed to be something called a kill chain that the Chinese specialise in, wherein the radar, GPS, planes and missiles are all linked together, and they react instantly… We simply did things in a different way; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to hit 11 airfields, and we wouldn’t have been able to breach the Chinese supply their defences. So it’s clear that assessments were taking place while the fighting was happening and we were recalibrating our strategies in order to end as effectively as we were able to end…The fact is, China has immense stakes in Pakistan. The largest single project the Belt and Road Initiative is in Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. So we have no illusions about the degree of commitment that China may well be feeling towards Pakistan.”

On a question asked by his son about whether any country had asked the delegation for evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attack and about Pakistan’s repeated denials of any role in the attack, Tharoor asserted, “I’m very glad you raised this. I didn’t plant it, I promise you. Very simply, no one had any doubt, and we were not asked for evidence. But the media have asked in two or three places. Let me say very clearly that India would not have done this without convincing evidence. But there were three particular reasons I want to draw your attention to all of you. The first is that we’ve had a 37-year pattern of repeated terror attacks from Pakistan, accompanied by repeated denials. I mean, Americans haven’t forgotten that Pakistan didn’t know, allegedly, where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in a Pakistani safe house right next to an army camp in a cantonment city. That’s Pakistan. Mumbai attacks- they denied having anything to do with it…So we know what Pakistan’s all about. They will dispatch terrorists, they will deny they did so until they’re actually caught with red hands.”




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