New Delhi: India on Friday said the issue of China blocking its bid at the United Nations to ban terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed’s chief Masood Azhar will not be taken up at the Brics Summit in Goa on October 16 since it is “not on the agenda”.
“It is a bilateral issue with China. India does not want to bring such issues to the multilateral fora,” MEA officials said, adding that terrorism, though, “will be forcefully taken up” as one of the major points of discussion during the Summit.
Secretary (economic relations) in the ministry of external affairs Amar Sinha lashed out at Pakistan without naming it, saying, “Isolation is a mentality. If a country decides to shut both its borders (with India and Afghanistan), that country is the most isolated.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strongly expected to take up the issue of terrorism in India’s neighbourhood at the Brics Summit, which is expected to be attended by China President Xi Jinping. Economic issues, too, will be discussed.
India will strongly push for joint efforts to tackle terrorism, including action against countries providing safe havens and arms to terrorists.
Briefing reporters, Mr Sinha said, “Agenda is drawn in a broad-brush manner. We will be looking at global economic and political situation. Obviously terrorism is very important part of that.” “Terrorism is a global problem. It cannot be tackled individually and has to be tackled collectively. We cannot have a differential policy towards terrorism. There is no good terrorist or bad terrorist,” he added.
He was also quoted by news agencies as saying that “there would be very strong paragraphs (in the Brics outcome document) on terrorism... At NSA-level meet, too, we have shifted the goalpost by talking about the sources of finance and where they (terrorists) get arms and ammunition. These will be reflected in the Brics discussions.”
