Building a powerful pitch against terrorism, India sought “concrete action” and setting up of a mechanism by the 120 member countries of the NAM to ensure effective cooperation to combat the menace on Sunday.
Vice President Hamid Ansari, who is leading the Indian delegation at the 17th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit, said terrorism is one of the “most egregious sources of human right violations today” and its use as a tool of state policy is to be unequivocally condemned.
The time has come “for our movement to recognise the need for concrete action in the fight against terrorism”, Ansari said while addressing the plenary meeting of the bloc in the absence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“We need to establish a mechanism within our movement that will ensure effective cooperation in combating terrorism, that is the main threat to security, sovereignty and development,” he added.
Ansari’s statements came against the backdrop of India raising its concerns at various international fora over Pakistan‘s support to cross-border terrorism.
Modi already had made clear references to Pakistan’s support to terrorism without naming it at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, at a BRICS meeting in Hangzhou and at the ASEAN and East Asia summits in Lao PDR.
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Describing terrorism as the “biggest threat” to international peace and to the sovereignty of states, Ansari asserted that no cause justifies the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians as a means to achieve a political goal or change of policies.
He stated that terrorism has become a major impediment to development.
“It is, therefore, imperative for the Non-Aligned Movement to galvanise the international community to strengthen the international legal framework to address this menace, including by adopting the draft Comprehensive UN Convention on Terrorism, to ensure the closest cooperation amongst the international community to counter the scourge of terror,” Ansari said.
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“We must also ensure that all existing structures that are the building blocks of UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy function in a non-partisan and professional manner,” Ansari added.
Earlier, during NAM’s Foreign Ministers’ meeting, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar had also called on NAM to set up a “working group on terrorism” to safeguard world peace, stability, and prosperity.
“Governments which think they can pay lip service to sanity at an NAM summit, and continue to arm, shelter and exploit terrorists in a war by other means, when they return home will learn that you cannot sip on poison and hope to live,” Akbar had said in an apparent reference to Pakistan.
“Our theme for the next three years – Peace, Sovereignty and Solidarity for Development – is in congruence with our founding principles,” he added.
Asserting that peace and sovereignty are a prerequisite for development, the Vice President said a peaceful global environment is essential for development and for development cooperation.
Concluding his address, Ansari said as the largest peace movement of the world, NAM must be in the vanguard of the principal international debates on political, strategic and even economic and social issues.
He hoped that one of the priorities of NAM will be to modernise the manner in which it functions.
“We began a discussion on this at the Cartagena Summit in 1995; this discussion must continue and fructify so that NAM may achieve its full potential,” Ansari said