India warns Pakistan cross-border terrorism will 'inevitably invite consequences' (Ld)

United Nations, Sept 28 : India has warned Pakistan that cross-border terrorism against India will "inevitably invite consequences" and ruled out any agreement while the military-run government indulges in terrorism.

Bhavika Mangalanandan, a First Secretary in India's UN mission, delivered the stern message on Friday while exercising India's right of reply to Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif's attacks on New Delhi during his address to the General Assembly's high-level meeting.

She said, "Pakistan should realise that cross-border terrorism against India will inevitably invite consequences."

It was a "travesty" for "a country run by the military with a global reputation for terrorism, narcotics trade. and transnational crime" to have "the audacity to attack the world's largest democracy," she said.

Sharif asserted that India had spurned his offer of "a mutual Strategic Restraint Regime."

Explaining India's rejection, Mangalanandan said, "There can be no compact with terrorism."

"Pakistan has long employed cross-border terrorism as a weapon against its neighbours; it has attacked our Parliament, our financial capital, Mumbai, marketplaces, and pilgrimage routes. The list is long," she said.

Appropriate for raising Pakistan's terrorism links, Mangalanandan, who is a 2015 batch Indian Foreign Service officer with an MTech degree from IIT Delhi, deals with counter-terrorism matters at the UN.

"The world can see for itself what Pakistan really is," she said. "We are talking about a nation that for long hosted (al-Qaeda terrorist organisation's leader) Osama bin Laden, a country whose fingerprints are on so many terrorist incidents across the world, whose policies attract the dregs of many societies to make it their home."

"For such a country to speak about violence anywhere is hypocrisy at its worst," she said.

On the subject of hypocrisy, Managalanandan said, "It is even more extraordinary for a country with a history of rigged elections to talk about political choices that too in a democracy."

"The real truth is that Pakistan covets our territory and, in fact, has continuously used terrorism to disrupt elections in Jammu and Kashmir, an inalienable and integral part of India," she said.

Hammering on the topic of hypocrisy, she added, "It is ridiculous that a nation that committed genocide in 1971 and which persecutes its minorities relentlessly, even now, dares speak about intolerances and phobias."

Sharif had accused India of promoting Islamaphobia and persecuting minorities.

Managalanandan said it was no surprise that Sharif should make such accusations against India.

"Yet we must make clear how unacceptable his words are to all of us. We know that Pakistan will seek to counter the truth with more lies. Repetition will change nothing. Our stand is clear and needs no reiteration," she said.

In reply, Muhammad Faheem, a Third Secretary in Pakistan, repeated most of what Sharif had said in the morning.

He denied that Pakistan had carried out a genocide in Bangladesh during the country's 1971 War of Independence and denigrated it as "foreign aggression."

He mentioned allegations that India was involved in a killing in Canada and an attempted murder in the US.