By IANS,
New Delhi : In a stinging attack on Pakistan, the Congress party said Tuesday that Islamabad itself was to blame for the terrorist attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore and called the country the “Somalia of South Asia”.
“Pakistan is a victim of its own polity,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters here, commenting on the Lahore incident that killed six Pakistani policemen and wounded six players from Sri Lanka.
“If there is something that is happening in Pakistan, it is only Pakistan that is responsible� It has no one else to blame.” He added: “It is a very, very grave situation (in Pakistan).”
While Pakistan claimed to be fighting terror, Tewari said, the terrorist network it had nurtured “for the last 30 years has now turned on them”.
“Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. The manner in which it is transcending from being a failed state to the Somalia of South Asia needs to worry the international community,” he added.
The international community needed to pay attention on how to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure on Pakistani territory, he said.
Tewari said that former secretary of state “Madeleine Albright was correct when she said that Pakistan was becoming the migraine of the world”.
According to him, if the terrorist problem had been confined to Pakistan, possibly the rest of the world would have built a wall around it and looked the other way.
“Unfortunately, you cannot change the neighbours”, he said, referring to India’s stand.
Earlier, speaking to another group of reporters, Tewari said the terrorist attack in Lahore was the result of the space Pakistan had conceded to terrorists.
“Whatever has been happening in Pakistan makes one conclude that Pakistan has been complacent in tackling the issue of terrorism.”
Tewari also complimented the Indian government for cancelling the tour of the Indian cricket team to Pakistan in December, a month after the Mumbai terror attacks.