India hits out at UNSC’s handling of terror issues

NEW DELHI: India has hit out at the working of the United Nations Security Council for what it perceives as an unresponsive manner in which the world body addresses

NEW DELHI: India has hit out at the working of the United Nations Security Council for what it perceives as an unresponsive manner in which the world body addresses the issue of terrorism.

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New Delhi cited inordinate delay in sanctioning terrorists, the secrecy of the procedures and more than 20 years of

dilly-dallying in amending norms to extradite terrorists to countries where they are wanted by the law.

“It is near impossible to argue the case of relevance of the UN on the issue of terrorism, where even adoption of an international norm to ‘prosecute or extradite’ terrorists evades us despite 20 years of talk,” India’s permanent representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said in his statement on the working of the organisation.

“At best, it is now a body that can be described as an interesting and random mix of ad-hocism, scrambling, and political paralysis,” he said.

What he dealt at length reflected India’s frustration with not being able to bring Pakistan-based individuals such as Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Mazood Azhar under the UN sanctions committee.

“It is a body that ponders over six months on whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorists. Then, unable to decide, it gives itself three more months to further consider the issue,” he said.

While the JeM had been designated as a terrorist organisation, Indian efforts to list Azhar had run into Chinese opposition.

On March 31 this year, China - a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council - had blocked India’s move to put a ban on Azhar under the al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. China was the sole member in the 15-nation UNSC to put a hold on India’s application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi’s bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban.

The Chinese technical hold had lapsed on Monday, and had China not raised further objection, the resolution designating Azhar as a terrorist would have been passed automatically. However, Beijing on Saturday announced the extension of its “technical hold”. “The extended technical hold on it will allow more time for the Committee to deliberate on the matter and for relevant parties to have further consultations,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing.

Akbaruddin said that as many as 31 entities within the United Nations deal with some aspect of countering terrorism.

“We have learnt of the adage that too many cooks spoil the broth. This is clearly the case as coherence and coordination is missing,” he said.