India and US ask Pakistan to take immediate, sustained action against terrorism

Washington: India and the US have asked Pakistan to take “immediate, sustained, and irreversible action” to ensure that no territory under its control is used for terrorist attacks and called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack and Pathankot attack to be brought to justice.
The demand for action by Pakistan was made through a joint statement issued after the 2+2 Ministerial attended by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
This came a day after Shehbaz Sharif replaced Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
The ministers called on Pakistan to take immediate, sustained, and irreversible action to ensure that no territory under its control is used for terrorist attacks, said the joint statement.
It noted that the ministers committed to the continued exchange of information about sanctions and designations against terror groups and individuals, countering violent radicalism, use of the internet for terrorist purposes, and cross-border movement of terrorists.
They also emphasised the importance of upholding international standards on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism by all countries, consistent with FATF recommendations, it said.
India and the US strongly condemned any use of terrorist proxies and cross-border terrorism in all its forms and called for the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack and Pathankot attack to be brought to justice.
They called for concerted action against all terrorist groups, including groups proscribed by the UNSC 1267 Sanctions Committee, such as al-Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb ul Mujahideen, the joint statement said.
Speaking to reporters after the 2+2 Ministerial, Singh said they talked about the issue of counterterrorism and how this has been used against India.
Singh said they also discussed the situation in the neighbourhood.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that during the virtual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden, the leaders did discuss developments in the region and in South Asia.
They touched on some of the developments in Sri Lanka, in Bangladesh. And I know that our State Department colleagues will be able to follow up on those discussions. It wasn’t a detailed discussion by the leaders, but it did come up, said the official.
PTI

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