SRINAGAR: India’s foreign minister Sushma Swaraj has skipped mentioning Kashmir but has attacked Pakistan for being a terror manufacturer, media reports said. She was responding to Pakistan premier Shahid
Khakan Abbasi’s speech.
Swaraj said while India is making IIMs and IITs, Pakistan continues to be a terror exporter and is creating outfits like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. She said the two countries became independent within hours on the same day but years after that the two countries are known for different activities: India for knowledge and science, and Pakistan for terror and destruction. She suggested Pakistan to look within.
Here are the excerpts from Ms Swaraj’s speech that are relevant to India Pakistan relations:
“We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us. On Thursday, from this dais, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi wasted rather too much of his speech in making accusations against us. He accused India of State sponsored terrorism, and of violating human rights. Those listening had only one observation: “Look who’s talking!” A country that has been the world’s greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister claimed that his nation’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. I would like to remind him that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace, and friendship. Pakistan’s Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.
Prime Minister Abbasi has recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events. But his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters. He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is tiiat Pakistan’s politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at “forgetting” facts that destroy their version.
Pakistan’s current Prime Minister spoke of a “Comprehensive Dialogue” between our two countries. I would like to remind him that on 9 December 2015, when I was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by his leader Mian Nawaz Sharif, then still Prime Minister, that dialogue between us should be renewed and named it a “Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue”. The word “bilateral” was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process.
I would like today to tell Pakistan’s politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eihinent export factory for terror?
India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan s nefarious export of terrorism. There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indian freedom, for we have been a sustained democracy. Every government has done its bit for India’s development. We have marched ahead, consistently, without pause, in Education, Health and across the range of human welfare. We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? We produced scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists. Doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death. If Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.”
