Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif refused to answer questions on UN-designated terrorist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed and allegations of Pakistan harbouring terrorists as he arrived at and later left the United Nations headquarters in New York on Thursday.
As Sharif entered the UN headquarters, an ANI reporter asked him: “Prime Minister, when will you stop harbouring terrorists? The Pakistani Prime Minister did not respond. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a UN-designated terrorist and a Pakistani national from Sargodha in Punjab province, is a designated terrorist under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and the founder of the proscribed terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Exercising its right of reply at the UN Human Rights Council, Indian diplomat Kshitij Tyagi criticised what he described as Pakistan’s diversionary tactics, asserting that its hostile posturing would do nothing to rescue its failing financial system. When those accounts were given, Pakistan’s answer was a point of order.
“Pakistan would better serve its people by focusing on development, rather than by coveting territory of others or exporting terror, because neither these nor its theatrics in the Council would help repay the loans its economy survives on,” Kshitij Tyagi said. “This Council was told last Friday of scores of civilians killed since June in the territory Pakistan occupies, of students arrested in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and of food and medicine held back. If any delegation in this room meets every objective criterion for this Council’s scrutiny, it is Pakistan,” Tyagi said.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister is scheduled to address the 81st United Nations General Assembly today, where he is expected to repeat Islamabad’s familiar rant about Kashmir. But ahead of that address, Sharif chose not to respond when confronted with questions over Pakistan’s safe haven for terrorists.
