International pressure making terror states accountable: Jaishankar

Some countries continue to deny their involvement in terrorism, but international pressure is making them accountable, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said.

International collaboration can be very effective in fighting terrorism as was evident last week a state complicit in aiding and abetting terrorism was “compelled” to acknowledge the presence of wanted terrorists, he said in his presidential address titled ‘Towards reformed multilateralism’ at the 19th Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture 2020 organised by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

The minister was alluding to Pakistan mentioning the names of India’s most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and JeM leader Masood Azhar on a list giving details of 88 banned terror groups and their leaders in its statutory regulatory orders (SRO), in an attempt to avoid getting blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental organisation to combat money laundering and fight terrorism.

“As we have seen last week, sustained pressure through international mechanisms to prevent the movement of funds for terror groups and their front agencies can work. It has eventually compelled a state complicit in aiding, abetting, training and directing terror groups and associated criminal syndicates to grudgingly acknowledge the presence of wanted terrorists and organised crime leaders on its territory,” Jaishankar said, according to ThePrint.

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Mechanisms such as the FATF are making states accountable, but there is still a need for a “global” convention to fight terrorism, he said and called for the need to adopt the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.

“We still lack a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, with the membership of the UN still wrestling with certain foundational principles. All the while, states that have turned the production of terrorists into a primary export have attempted, by dint of bland denials, to paint themselves as victims of terror,” he said, ThePrint reported.

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