By IANS,
New Delhi : Having suffered terror strikes, including the audacious Mumbai attacks in 2008, India Wednesday asked its neighbours not to just do lip service to countering these threats emanating from their soil, but to take “concrete actions” to match their intentions.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde asked his counterparts from seven other South Asian nations if their countries were actually doing enough to curb terror activities and acting on robust intelligence inputs shared among them.
Shinde was addressing the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting of home ministers from the eight member-states at the Bandos Island resort in the Maldives.
“Each instance of terrorism in our region is a reminder for us to cooperate in concrete action rather than merely in intentions,” Shinde said.
“As ministers responsible for securing our nations, we need to consider if we are doing enough to address these challenges,” he said, reminding his counterparts that often at such meetings they all reiterated the need to share information on a real-time basis on terrorist groups, organised criminal activity and their supporting networks.
“However, intelligence-sharing is meaningful only if it is acted upon. The incentive to share information is reduced if it is perceived that it is either being disregarded or not utilised properly,” Shinde said.
His comments come against the backdrop of India providing innumerable dossiers to Pakistan on the 26/11 Mumbai terror attackers and asking for action against Pakistan-based key players behind the attacks, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s Hafiz Saeed.
Shinde said the SAARC members need to recognise that terrorism, trafficking in drugs and humans, arms and currency counterfeiting are a challenge to the entire region.
“The objective of such forces is common: to weaken established systems. This is why such menaces are inter-linked. Clearly, therefore, it is not possible to separate one set of criminal activities and dismiss them as being a problem for someone else,” he said.
Describing these threats to nations as “cancers”, Shinde said these could be removed from the region if all nations acted in concert.
“To tackle these cancers collectively, we have a number of SAARC mechanisms and conventions in place. On paper, these are well-crafted documents providing legal structures for a range of efforts to make our region more secure. However, it seems clear that we are collectively not proactive enough in implementing these measures,” he said.
“In some instances, we have signed conventions which are yet to enter into force. Where they have already entered into force, enabling legislation is required to give effect to such treaties. Where legislation is in place, measures are needed to make regional cooperation substantive and meaningful,” Shinde said.
“Perhaps we all need to make more determined efforts in this regard,” he added.
Noting that terrorism is the “single largest hindrance” to socio-economic development of South Asia, Shinde reiterated his conviction that it is “the most significant existential challenge” to peace and security.
“Its linkages with organised crime has led to the simultaneous growth of trafficking in illicit drugs, small arms and light weapons, and in related instances of exploitation of women and children,” he added.