Pakistan lacks will to tackle terrorism, says Mukherjee

[Salahadin]

NEW DELHI (PTI): Describing the attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore as the "most disturbing" development, India on Friday said the incident showed Pakistan's lack of will to tackle terrorism. New Delhi warned that world will not remain immune to the "flames ignited there" unless the international community ensured that Pakistan dismantled the terror infrastructure on an urgent basis. "As this week's reprehensible attack on Lankan cricketers in Lahore shows, government's lack of will or capablity in tackling this menace becomes a major hindrance in the smooth process of change," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at the India Today Conclave here. He also stressed that nations that have used terror as an instrument of state policy should be left with no choice but to dismantle their infrastructure of terrorism and "actively cooperate" with the international community to eliminate this scourge." Mukherjee said this threat needed the efforts of the international community at large to "ensure that it is eliminated on an urgent basis." "Otherwise, no part of the world would remain immune to the flames being ignited there," Mukherjee said pointing out that the developments in Pakistan were the "most disturbing" for every right thinking person in the world and "without doubt, for us Indians." The world is "slowly but surely" moving in the direction of reaching the threshold of zero tolerance of terrorism, he said. Pranab Mukherjee, India's foreign minister and acting finance minister, said the Obama administration's massive stimulus plan will restrict trade and weaken efforts to beat the global slump, renewing criticism of what it considers a drift toward protectionism. The US government's $787 billion stimulus package, which was signed into law last month, aims to pull the world's largest economy out of recession and protect jobs, and includes billions of dollars for public building projects. But a "Buy American" clause insisting firms use US-made goods for public works and building projects funded by the stimulus package and a speech in which US President Barack Obama said he would seek to end tax breaks for firms which outsource jobs have alarmed New Delhi. "The US government's stimulus package imposing restrictions on public procurement or discouraging US firms from outsourcing or restricting hiring of foreign workers is not in keeping with the spirit of global cooperation," Mukherjee said at a business conference. "That the biggest economy in the world, the United States, where this global financial tsunami originated, should be resorting to trade-restrictive practices is particularly disturbing," he said. "This is a negative trend and is likely to have a cascading effect in other major economies and, thereby, undermine the global efforts to overcome the current crisis in the shortest possible time-frame."


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