Quick reply:Eenam Gambhir, Indian envoy, replied to Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood QureshiFile photo  

Pakistan’s attempts to link India to the 2014 Peshawar terrorist attack were “most outrageous”, New Delhi told the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday.

During his address earlier at the General Assembly, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had blamed India for the terrorist strike that killed 149 people, most of them children, at the Army Public School.

‘Despicable insinuation’

“The despicable insinuation made by the Foreign Minister of Pakistan dishonours the memory of the innocent lives lost to terrorists on that day,” the First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to UN, Eanam Gambhir, said in remarks after Mr. Qureshi’s address.

Mr. Qureshi had sought to put the blame on India for the terrorism afflicting his country. “Pakistan continues to face terrorism financed and orchestrated by India — shall never forget the mass murder of more than 150 children in a Peshawar school, the terrible Mastung attack and others that have links with terrorists supported by India,” he had said.

Terming the charges “most outrageous” and “preposterous”, Ms. Gambhir recalled that there was massive outpouring of sympathy across India in the aftermath of the terror attack.

“Let me recollect for the new government of Pakistan the outpouring of sorrow and pain in India that followed the massacre of innocent children in 2014. Both Houses of India's Parliament had expressed solidarity while paying respect to the memory of those killed,” she said. “It is a desperate attempt to look away from the monster of terror that Pakistan has itself created to destabilise its neighbours and covet their territory,” she said.

India’s rebuttal of Pakistan’s allegations centred on questioning the Imran Khan government’s claims of a change in Islamabad’s behaviour, through its slogan, “Naya Pakistan”.

“New Pakistan cast in mould of old,” Syed Akbaruddin, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN posted on Twitter.

New vision questioned

“For a new vision to materialise, Pakistan must demonstrate that it has moved beyond the narrative of distortion, deception and deceit,” Ms. Gambhir said in her remarks.

“Let me make it clear to the new government of Pakistan that the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India,” she said. She pointed out that 22 of 132 terrorist entities designated by the UN were being “hosted” by Pakistan. The mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack and an UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed “enjoys a free run inside Pakistan and spews venom and sets up candidates for electoral office,” she said.

In a rejoinder to her remarks, Saad Warraich, a Pakistani diplomat, said Hindu supremacism in India was promoting terrorism. “The breeding ground of terrorism in our region is the RSS centres of fascism. The claims of religious superiority are perpetrated through state patronage all across India,” she said.

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