India Will Defend Itself Against Terror, Asserts Jaishankar

New Delhi:External affairs minister S. Jaishankar told the UN General Assembly on Saturday that India would continue to defend itself against terrorism, accusing Pakistan, without naming it, of trying to normalise the scourge and escape its consequences.

“Yesterday, a serial practitioner of terrorism misrepresented facts before this Assembly,” Jaishankar said in India’s address to the General Debate, a day after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke at the UN. He said arguments had been made to normalise terrorism and claim immunity from its consequences. “That will not stand.”

Jaishankar said friendship and goodwill could not coexist with terrorism and that understandings based on them would be called into question. “It is for the perpetrator of terrorism to mend its ways,” he said. Governments involved in state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism must be held accountable, he added, calling for an undiluted zero-tolerance approach and action against terror financing.

Turning to the conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia, Jaishankar warned of their impact on food, fuel, fertiliser and financial security, particularly in the Global South. He condemned attacks on commercial shipping and seafarers as “simply unacceptable” and referred to India’s initiative with Liberia and other countries to strengthen international cooperation to protect them.

India supported efforts to end the conflicts and was “willing to do everything possible” to advance peace and safeguard food and energy security, he said. Referring to the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fifth year, he recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that “endless war must give way now to an end to war”.

Jaishankar warned that the world was “living on the edge of an abyss” and said the countries bearing the greatest costs of global conflicts often had the least say in decisions about them. He also raised threats to the Global South’s right to industrialise and spoke of India’s efforts to build capacity in African countries.

Earlier, India used its Right of Reply to reject Sharif’s remarks on terrorism and Kashmir. Petal Gahlot, First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, called Pakistan’s claims “falsehoods” and warned that continued terrorism would have consequences.

Gahlot described Pakistan’s government as “a regime of the army, by the army, and for the army” and referred to the immunity granted to its military leadership under the 27th Constitutional Amendment. She also recalled that Osama bin Laden had lived near Pakistan’s premier military academy before US forces found and killed him.

Rejecting Sharif’s remarks on Kashmir, Gahlot said Jammu and Kashmir was an integral and inalienable part of India. She drew attention to allegations of violence and denial of rights in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and criticised Pakistan’s treatment of minorities.

“Reiterating falsehoods year after year does not make them true. Pakistan’s terrorism, deceit and duplicity will neither benefit it nor the world,” she said.

Sharif had credited US President Donald Trump with a “timely intervention” in the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict. He also said a “just and fair” solution to the Kashmir issue was needed to prevent another confrontation. India rejected his account.

Gahlot referred to Operation Sindoor, launched by India in May 2025 against what it described as terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir after the Pahalgam attack killed 26 civilians. “Our right to defend ourselves against terrorism will be exercised. And continued terrorism by Pakistan will have consequences,” she said.