Any plan to burn Quran is highly disrespectful: US Ambassador
Condemning the plans of an American Pastor to burn the holy Quran, the United States today said such "disruptive and disrespectful" attempts hurt efforts to counter "blood thirsty elements" and terror attacks like those in New York and Mumbai.
Condemning the plans of an American Pastor to burn the holy Quran, the United States today said such "disruptive and disrespectful" attempts hurt efforts to counter "blood thirsty elements" and terror attacks like those in New York and Mumbai.
US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer said President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and he himself condemn any individual's attempt to burn the holy Quran. "This is highly disrespectful, divisive and disruptive. It does not represent American values," he told reporters after meeting Home Minister P Chidambaram.
Roemer said the US and India look at this issue through the same prism and feel that "this is very disruptive, disrespectful and this hurt the efforts to counter the evil and blood thirsty elements around the world".
The Ambassador said as the world approaches 9/11, which is tomorrow, and the 26/11, which will come after two months, the US and India look for ways to counter terrorist elements across the globe.
"We look for ways to have our two countries work together on the global stage to counter these efforts to attack Mumbai or New York in the future. Part of these efforts are military and a great deal through development, through diplomacy, through religion being respected and through working together at the inter-faith level," he said. Roemer said he conveyed to Chidambaram that the US did not subscribe the action of American Pastor Terry Jones, who had announced to burn the holy Quran which had sparked outrage across the world.
"I certainly expressed to Mr Chidambaram that the US is strongly condemning any action to burn Quran. This is disruptive, divisive, disrespectful and also this does not represent American values in shape and form.
The Minister and I talked about this," he said. Chidambaram yesterday had condemned the plan by the pastor of a small Florida church to burn copies of the holy Quran to mark the 9/11 attacks and called on US authorities to take "strong action" to prevent such an "outrage" being committed.