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China again halts India-US move at UN over blacklisting Pak-based terrorist

 

This is the fourth instance in months that China has halted efforts to blacklist terrorists at the United Nations.



United Nations:

China has withheld a proposal by India and the US to the United Nations to list Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Shahid Mehmood as a global terrorist, marking the fourth instance that Beijing has made bids to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorists. has stopped. on the world body.

It is learned that Pakistan's all-time ally China had blocked India and the US's proposal to designate 42-year-old Mahmood as a global terrorist under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council.

The US Treasury Department in December 2016 fired Mahmood as well as another Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, Muhammad Sarwar, as part of an action "for disrupting Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) fundraising and support networks". was nominated in. The decision to halt comes at a time when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is in India to pay tribute to the victims of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Terrorist attack by Lashkar in which more than 160 people including US citizens were killed.

According to information on the US Treasury Department website, Mahmood "has been a long-time senior LeT member based in Karachi, Pakistan, and has been associated with the group since at least 2007. From June 2015 to at least June 2016. Mahmood Served as Vice President of Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), the humanitarian and fundraising arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

In 2014, Mahmood was the leader of the FIF in Karachi. The website said that in August 2013, Mahmood was identified as a wing member of a Lashkar publication.

"Mahmood was previously part of LeT's foreign campaign led by Sajid Mir... Also, in August 2013, Mahmood was instructed to forge secret links with Islamic organizations in Bangladesh and Burma, and by the end of 2011 , Mahmood claimed that was Lashkar-e-Taiba's primary concern. India and the US should attack," the US Treasury Department said.

This is the fourth time in as many months that China has blocked the listing of proposals to designate Pakistan-based terrorists under the 1267 Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee regime.


In June this year, China had at the last minute put a halt to a joint proposal by India and the US to blacklist Pakistan-based terrorist Abdul Rehman Makki under the 1267 Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council.

Makki is the US-designated terrorist and brother-in-law of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed. New Delhi and Washington had put forward a joint resolution under the UN Security Council's 1267 ISIL and Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee to designate Makki as a global terrorist, but Beijing blocked the proposal at the last minute.


Then in August, China again withheld the US and India's proposal to blacklist senior leader of Pakistan-based terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) Abdul Rauf Azhar.

Azhar, who was born in Pakistan in 1974, was cleared by the US in December 2010. China had blocked a proposal by India and the US to designate Azhar as a global terrorist and impose an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo. ,

The US Treasury Department in December 2010 named Abdul Rauf Azhar, a senior Jaish-e Mohammad (JeM) leader, "to act for or on behalf of JeM."

The US said that as a senior leader of the JeM, Abdul Rauf Azhar "urges Pakistanis to engage in terrorist activities. He served in 2007 as the acting leader of the JeM, one of the most senior commanders of the JeM in India." As one and served as the intelligence coordinator of the JeM. 2008 Azhar was assigned to organize suicide attacks in India. He was also associated with the political wing of the JeM and served as a JeM officer involved in training camps. worked as it should."

In September, Beijing withheld a resolution tabled by the US and co-supported by India to designate Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Sajid Mir, who was involved in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. wanted to be. global terrorist. Mir is one of India's most wanted terrorists and a $5 million bounty has been placed on his head by the US for his role in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

In June this year, he was jailed for over 15 years by an anti-terrorism court in a terror-financing case in Pakistan, which is struggling to get out of the FATF's gray list. Pakistani authorities have claimed in the past that Mir had died, but Western countries remained unconvinced and demanded proof of his death. The issue became a major key point in the FATF's assessment of Pakistan's progress on the Action Plan late last year.

Mir is a senior member of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and is wanted for his involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. US State Department says Lashkar-e-Taiba's support for Mir attacks.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, in his address to the high-level session of the UN General Assembly in September, said that "the UN responds to terrorism by sanctioning its perpetrators. Those who politicize the UNSC 1267 sanctions regime, sometimes even That is declared even to the extent of defense. Terrorists, do so at their own risk. Trust me, they neither advance their interests nor really their reputation."

Amid repeated moratoriums on proposals to designate terrorists under the UN sanctions regime, Mr Jaishankar told reporters at the UN last month that terrorism should not be used as a political tool and the view that Something is blocked without giving a reason, challenges common sense.

Jaishankar had said in the new, “We believe that in any process if any party is taking a decision, they need to be transparent about it. So the idea that something has been blocked without assigning any reason, it is challenges common sense." York in response to a question by PTI on the issue of repeatedly blocking and blocking proposals to list terrorists under the UN sanctions regime.

Even before this, China, an all-time friend of Islamabad, has blocked bids by India and its allies to list terrorists based in Pakistan. In May 2019, India scored a major diplomatic victory at the United Nations when the global body designated Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist", a decade after New Delhi had approached the world body for the first time. issue.

China was the only hold-out in the 15-nation body to block efforts to have a "technical hold" in an effort to blacklist Azhar, a veto-holding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

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