india

Updated: Mar 01, 2019 22:59 IST

India used its maiden appearance at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday to launch a thinly-veiled attack on Pakistan-backed terror, calling for concerted efforts to end the funding and backing of terrorists by states.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, speaking as the guest of honour at the inaugural session of the meeting of OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers in Abu Dhabi, stressed the fight against terror wasn’t a “confrontation against any religion”.

Almost 50 years after Pakistan shut out India from meetings held in Rabat, Morocco, which led to the creation of OIC, by threatening a boycott, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi stayed away from the meeting in Abu Dhabi after the grouping didn’t act on Islamabad’s demand to withdraw the invitation to New Delhi.

Indian officials described the country’s “historic” presence at the meeting as a new chapter in the engagement with OIC.

In her speech, Swaraj highlighted New Delhi’s robust economic and security cooperation with numerous members of the 56-member grouping, and the role of the country’s 185 million Muslims, a “microcosm of the diversity of India”.

Swaraj then turned to “senseless terrorist violence” that has wreaked havoc across the world, including in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and, without naming Pakistan, said: “If we want to save the humanity then we must tell the states who provide shelter and funding to the terrorists, to dismantle the infrastructure of the terrorist camps and stop providing funding and shelter to the terror organisations, based in their country.”

Besides using military, intelligence and diplomatic means to fight terror, countries should also use the “strengths of our values and the real message of religions”, she said.

Terrorism and extremism are “driven by distortion of religion” and the fight against the menace is “not a confrontation against any religion”, she said. “It cannot be. Just as Islam literally means peace, none of the 99 names of Allah mean violence,” she added.

Swaraj quoted from the Quran, the teachings of Guru Nanak and the Rig Veda while pointing to India’s embrace of pluralism, and said diversity has ensured “very few Muslims in India have fallen prey to the poisonous propaganda of radical and extremist ideologies”.

A statement from Pakistan’s foreign office said Qureshi had decided not to join the meeting because India has no legal or moral grounds to be present. The statement also said India has “unresolved disputes with Pakistan, a founding member of OIC”.

Almost as a riposte, Swaraj referred to India’s engagement with the UAE and the entire Gulf and West Asia region, and the efforts of Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and others OIC members “for hearing India’s voice in this forum”.

Besides West Asia, India has close partnerships with Asian states such as Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia that are important pillars of the Act East policy, as well as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives in its neighbourhood, she said. India’s partnership with Iran, she added, is “vital for stability and prosperity in our region”.

Swaraj also noted that the Gulf Region, besides being a supplier of energy and source of remittances, is home to more than 8 million Indians. “It is an indispensable strategic and security partnership, and a natural economic partnership, of immense value, to our nations, and for our shared region,” she said.