United Nations: Stepping up the international pressure to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, the US, supported by France and the UK, has moved a draft resolution in the UN Security Council to blacklist the Pakistan-based terror group’s chief.
Two weeks after China put a hold on a proposal to list Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council, the US on Wednesday circulated the draft resolution to the powerful 15-nation Council to blacklist the leader of the Pakistan-based terror group and subject him to a travel ban, an assets freeze and an arms embargo.
UN sources told PTI that this is the “first time” the US, the UK and France have moved a draft resolution directly in the Security Council to designate Azhar.
The previous have been listing proposals in the Sanctions Committee of the Council to designate Azhar. Unlike a listing proposal, which is generally under a 10- day no objection period, the draft resolution is not under any no-objection provision.
Sources said that the draft resolution will be discussed informally and then it goes to the Council. However, it’s not yet decided by when a vote would be held on the draft resolution, during when it could again face a veto by China, which has in the past blocked bids to blacklist Azhar.
Sources said the draft resolution would condemn “in the strongest terms the heinous and cowardly suicide bombing” on February 14 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district that killed 40 CRPF personnel.
An annex to the draft resolution says Azhar is associated with the Islamic State terror group, Al-Qaida for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating” or “supplying, selling or transferring arms and related material” or supporting acts of JeM.It says that Azhar founded JeM after his release from prison in India in 1999 in exchange for 155 hostages held on an Indian Airlines flight that had been hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan.
It adds that he was previously the leader of the terrorist group Harakat al Mujahadin, also known as Harakat ul-Ansar, and that most of these groups’ members subsequently joined Jaish under Azhar’s leadership.
In 2008, JeM recruitment posters contained a call from Azhar for volunteers to join the fight in Afghanistan against Western forces.
However, for a resolution in the Security Council to pass, it needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes from any of its five permanent members – China, Russia, the United States, France and the UK. France, the UK and the US on February 27 moved a proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee. It was under the no-objection period and Committee members had a period of 10 working days to raise any objections to the proposal.
More than a dozen member states had co-sponsored the proposal. About an hour before the no-objection deadline was to expire on March 13, China blocked the proposal. (PTI)
