New Delhi: Without naming the country, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar criticised Pakistan for portraying itself as a victim of terrorism and said that international pressure had compelled the country to “grudgingly” acknowledge the presence of terrorists within its territory.

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.In a reference to Pakistan,  S Jaishankar said countries that have turned the "production" of terrorists into a "primary export" have attempted to paint themselves as victims of terror as he pitched for global mechanisms to dismantle the structures supporting terrorism.

Jaishankar, however, did not name Pakistan during his virtual address at The Energy and Resources Institute. “19 years from the tragedy of ‘9/11’ and 12 years from our own ‘26/11’, we have a range of mechanisms in place to contend with terrorism,” Jaishankar said. “But we still lack a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. All the while, States that have turned the production of terrorists into a primary export have attempted, by dint of bland denials, to paint themselves as victims of terror.”

The foreign minister described the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and the coronavirus crisis as “moments that disrupted the trajectory of human society”. “We have long known intellectually that terrorism is cancer that potentially affects everyone, just as pandemics potentially impact upon all humanity,” he said. “And yet, in both cases, globalized focused responses to either challenge have tended to emerge only when there has been sufficient disruption created by a ‘spectacular’ event.”

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Jaishankar added that the fight against terrorism was a continuing process. “The struggle against terror and those who aid and abet it is a work in progress,” he said. “It remains for the international system to create the necessary mechanisms to shut down the structures that support and enable terrorism, whether in South Asia or across the globe.”

Pakistan's Dawood Row

The minister was referring to the Pakistan government’s move last week in which it released two notifications, or Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs), giving details of the present status of 88 terrorists and their entities, including Dawood Ibrahim, Jamaat-ul-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed and JeM leader Masood Azhar, to the United Nations.

The Imran Khan government subsequently distanced itself from acknowledging that Dawood is present in that country.

Jaishankar said it is due to a range of mechanisms such as the Financial Action Task Force, various UN Sanctions Committees and the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, that countries such as Pakistan are now made accountable for growth in terrorism.

Last month, the global terror-financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force had decided to keep Pakistan in the “grey list” for failing to check the flow of funds to terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Pakistan was put on FATF’s “grey list” in 2018 and given a 27-point Action Plan to implement in order to be taken off of it.

In October 2019, the watchdog indicted Pakistan for failing to deliver on 22 out of 27 targets. The task force also warned Pakistan that it would be blacklisted if it failed to achieve the targets by February 2020.

India, which is a member of the global organisation, has repeatedly asked Pakistan to take necessary steps to meet international standards in stopping financial crimes.

(With PTI inputs)