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‘Compulsive hostility towards India’: MEA on US report alleging Muizzu ouster plot
India on Friday rejected media report linking New Delhi to an alleged failed plot to impeach Maldives president Mohamed Muizzu
India on Friday rejected two Washington Post reports --one linking New Delhi to an alleged failed plot to impeach Maldives president Mohamed Muizzu, and another on Indian agents reportedly attempting to eliminate terror elements in Pakistan.
According to the Post's report, agents of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), reportedly began discussing with opposition leaders in the island nation to impeach Muizzu, seen as pro-China.
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The report claimed that Maldivian opposition leaders offered to bribe 40 MPs, including those from the president's party, to vote to impeach him. But the agents could not procure enough votes to remove Muizzu and the plan failed after months, the report claimed.
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Ministry of external affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, while rejecting the news report, said,"Both the newspaper and the reporter in question appear to nurse a compulsive hostility towards India. You can see a pattern in their activities. I leave you to judge their credibility. As far as we are concerned, they have none," PTI quoted Jaiswal as saying.
MEA rejects news report ‘targeted killings’ in Pakistan
According to the Washington Post report, India's RAW allegedly deployed an assassination programme since 2021 to eliminate at least half a dozen people deep within Pakistan. The killings were targeted at members of UN-designated terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Responding to the news report, Jaiswal said,"As regards (the report on) Pakistan, I remind you of what Hillary Clinton said -- 'You cannot keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours."
Clinton had made the comments in a blunt message to Pakistan in 2011, when she was serving as the US secretary of state.
She had also said that Washington intended to "push the Pakistanis very hard" to remove militant safe havens and tackle groups like the Haqqani network that are responsible for cross-border strikes.
(With PTI inputs)
