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Journalism of Courage
Talking tough, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday asserted that the mood in India now is not to overlook terrorism emanating from Pakistan which uses it as an “instrument of statecraft” and where terrorists are being sponsored at an “industry level”.
Jaishankar, who is on a three-day visit to Singapore, made these remarks during a Q&A round held post his lecture session on his book Why Bharat Matters at Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) of National University of Singapore (NUS).
“Every country wants a stable neighbourhood… if nothing else, you want at least a quiet neighbourhood,” he said to a question on India’s ties with Pakistan. Unfortunately, it is not the same with India, he said. Underlining that Pakistan has been sponsoring terrorism against India, Jaishankar asked, “How do you deal with a neighbour who does not hide the fact that they use terrorism as an instrument of statecraft?”
“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 India now, “the mood is not to overlook terrorists”, Jaishankar said in a strong message to the new government in Islamabad. “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.
He also described India’s relationship with Russia and the US as a “multi-vector” policy and said it was possible to deal with each one on a “non-exclusive” basis because of India’s strong non-alliance culture. He dismissed China’s repeated claims on Arunachal Pradesh as “ludicrous” and asserted that the frontier state was a “natural part of India”.
Jaishankar also reiterated the two-state solution to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and said “very serious efforts” are underway for a permanent solution.
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