India on Friday lashed out at Pakistan after Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a «butcher of Gujarat» in a fresh bout of tension between the two nations.
«As recent conferences and events have shown, the fight against terrorism remains high on the global agenda. Pakistan’s undisputed role in sponsoring, harboring and actively funding terrorists and terrorist organizations remains under the scanner,» he said in a statement.
In this regard, the Indian Foreign Ministry has specified that this «uncivilized outburst» by Pakistan is the result of the country’s «growing inability» to deal with terrorism, as reported by the India Today television channel.
«Pakistan is a country that glorifies Osama bin Laden as a martyr and harbors terrorists like Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Sajid Mir and Dawood Ibrahim. No other country can boast of having 126 UN-designated terrorists and 27 designated terrorist entities,» he added.
Pakistan’s foreign minister called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the «butcher of Gujarat» at a UN Security Council meeting in New York after his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar accused Islamabad of being the «epicenter of terrorism».
Modi was chief minister of Gujarat before becoming prime minister, and during his tenure in 2002 some of India’s worst religious riots took place, killing more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims Diplomatic relations between India and Pakistan traditionally oscillate between open confrontation and almost complete paralysis, following three armed conflicts, two of them over the disputed region of Kashmir, and amid mutual accusations of attacks on both sides of the border.
Pakistan and India have been disputing the historic Kashmir region since 1947 and have clashed over it in two of the three wars they have fought since independence from the United Kingdom. In 1999 there was a brief but intense military confrontation between the two nuclear powers and a fragile truce has been in place since 2003.
Separatist groups that advocate independence or union with Pakistan operate in the area. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of sponsoring these militias, but the Pakistanis deny any involvement. Estimates put the number of people killed in the conflict since the late 1980s at 45,000.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
