External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Saturday took a dig at Pakistan over its terrorism activities saying that the neighbouring country does not hide the fact that it uses terrorism as an instrument of statecraft and in India, “the mood is not to overlook terrorists”.
While responding to a question after delivering a lecture on why ‘Bharat’ matters at NUS’ Institute of South Asian Studies during his three-day visit to Singapore, the union minister said that Pakistan is now sponsoring terrorism at an “industry level.”
“It’s not a one-off happening…but very sustained, almost at an industry level…So what we have come to conclude is that we have to find a way of addressing (the menace), that dodging the problem gets us nowhere, it only invites more trouble,” he said in response to a question on India’s relations with Pakistan as quoted by news agency PTI.
He also spoke about how the neighbouring country does not hide the fact that they use terrorism as an instrument of statecraft.
“Every country wants a stable neighbourhood…if nothing else you want at least a quiet neighbourhood. How do you deal with a neighbour who does not hide the fact that they use terrorism as an instrument of statecraft?”
Highlighting the fact that Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorism against India, Jaishankar asserted that India is not going to skirt the Islamic country’s terror problem anyomore.
“I don’t have a quick instantaneous fix (to this issue). But what I can tell you is that India will not skirt this problem anymore. We are not going to say, ‘well, that happened and let’s continue our dialogue’…we have a problem and we must be honest enough to face up to that problem, however difficult it is…we should not give the other country a free pass, saying there’s nothing they can do about it or it’s a very hard problem, or there’s so much else at stake that let us overlook,” he asserted.
The external affairs minister also rubbished China’s repeated claims on Arunachal Pradesh, calling them “ludicrous” and asserting that the frontier state is a “natural part of India”.
China has been claiming Arunachal Pradesh as South Tibet and has also named the area as ‘Zangnan’. The country also objected to Indian leaders’ visits to the state to highlight its claims. Earlier this week, India reacted strongly to the Chinese side’s repeated claims, saying that “repeating baseless arguments in this regard does not lend such claims any validity”.
(With inputs from PTI)