India’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has said on Wednesday the terrorist attacks such as Pulwama terror attack are the unpleasant reminder for the “need of all the countries to show ‘zero tolerance’ towards terrorism”.
According to ANI news reports the Indian Air Force operation yesterday was carried out in light of Pakistan declining to acknowledge incident and act against the perpetrators of the terror attack operating from its soil and information that Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit was planning to attack in Jammu and Kashmir, Swaraj said.
She said India does not want to see any further escalation of the situation and it will continue to act in line with restraint and responsibility. She made these remarks which addressing the 16th foreign ministers meeting of Russia-India-China (RIC) at Wuzhen in China on Wednesday. The conference was attended by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
While noting that JeM claimed the responsibility of the suicide bombing attack on February 14 in which about 44 CRPF personnel suffered death with several other wounded, Swaraj said, “Such dastardly terrorist attacks are a grim reminder for the need of all the countries to show zero tolerance to terrorism and take decisive action against it.”
Swaraj further added, “In the light, if continuing refusal by Pakistan to acknowledge an act against terror groups based on its territory, and based on credible information that JeM is planning other attacks in various parts of India, the government of India decided to take pre-emptive action.”
She said instead of taking seriously the calls by the international community to act against and JeM and several others working on their soil in Islamabad, following the Pulwama terror attack, Pakistani had denied any knowledge of the attack and out-rightly dismissed claims by JeM.
ON Tuesday, IAF aircrafts had targeted the “biggest training camp” of the JeM camps in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. Swaraj said the target was chosen to avoid civilian casualties and that the operation was non-military.
Swaraj added, “It wasn’t a military operation, no military installation was targeted. The limited objective of the pre-emptive strike was to act decisively against terror infrastructure of JeM to pre-empt another terror attack in India.”