United Nations: The UN Security Council has demanded that the Taliban should not allow terrorists to use its territory for attacks against other countries and this would apply to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), according to India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla.
The resolution was adopted under India’s presidency by a divided Council where China and Russia were the outliers who abstained on the vote on the resolution, but refraining from vetoing it in view of the overwhelming global support for the sentiments behind it.
All the other 13 members voted for it.
India played a “constructive and bridging” role at the Council and worked to the “extent possible for consensus-based” outcomes, Shringla said and this diplomacy was evident in saving the resolution proposed by the US, Britain, and France from a veto by China and Russia, even as they expressed their opposition.
“Today’s UN Security Council Resolution, therefore, is a very important and timely pronouncement coming as it does during India’s Presidency of the UN Security Council,” Shringla told reporters outside the Security Council after presiding over the meeting on Afghanistan.
Shringla said that India was “extremely happy” with the resolution as it “highlights the will of the Council to take necessary steps that are very important for the international community in its engagement with Afghanistan.”
The Council action came while the clocks 10,000 km away in Afghanistan rolled past midnight into August 31, the deadline President Joe Biden had set for his country’s withdrawal from there, and the last C-17 aircraft took off from Kabul International Airport.
At UN, Shringla said, “I want to highlight the fact that the resolution makes it very clear that Afghan territory should not be used to threaten or attack any other country. In particular, it also underlines the importance of combating terrorism.”
The Council is “unequivocal” on terrorism, he said. The resolution said that Afghanistan “not be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter or train terrorists, or to plan or to finance terrorist acts.” (Agencies)
