Washington: The United States has asked Pakistan to put in a “sincere” and “sustained” effort to reign in terror elements operating freely from its soil, warning it of an “extremely problematic” situation if another terror attack were to happen in India.
The stern message from the USA is being seen as a major diplomatic achievement for India as it has mounted a concerted effort at the international level to isolate Pakistan for harbouring terrorism. The US warning comes despite China stalling attempts at the UN to designate JeM founder Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.
US is widely believed to have played a major role in bringing down tensions between India and Pakistan which had reached a flashpoint following the Pulwama terror attack. India, however, has not explicitly admitted about US involvement.
“We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to rein in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to ensure that we don’t have re-escalation (of tensions) in the region“, news agency PTI quoted a senior White House official as saying.
“If there’s any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries,” he said on the condition of anonymity.
He asserted that Pakistan must take punitive measures to end terrorism from its soil and not resort to some kind of piecemeal approach to satisfy the international community.
“But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we’ve seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies,” the official said.
The Pulwama attack had claimed the lives of 40 CRPF jawans. Following the attack, India carried out air strike deep inside Pakistan at Balakot and destroyed JeM-operated centres there training militants. JeM had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack.
