NEW YORK, May 25: Operation Sindoor has shown Pakistan that India can hit terrorism infrastructure with a “degree of precision” and put it on notice that if its terrorists hit New Delhi there will be consequences, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said as his team of members of Parliament brought the anti-terrorism message to the US.
“We are determined now that there’s got to be a new bottom line” to Pakistan’s terrorist attacks on India, he said here at the start of the mission of MPs of the BJP and the opposition parties.
“The perpetrators of terror should indeed be brought to justice, and we are not going to stop our hunt for those who did this latest atrocity,” the Congress leader said.
“We have tried everything, international dossier, complaints,” to no avail, he said, explaining why India directly attacked the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and the areas of Kashmir it occupies.
The team will go to Guyana, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil, before returning to the US for meetings in Washington.
In a forceful display of the nation uniting against terrorism, the team is headed by Tharoor from the opposition Congress Party and includes Shambhavi of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Sarfaraz Ahmad of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and Milind Murli Deora of the Shiv Sena.
“I don’t work for the government, as you know. I work for an opposition party,” Tharoor said of his role.
The team of MPs started with a visit to the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Centre to honour the 2,731 victims of the worst terrorist attack in the US, which also has connections to Pakistan.
A large number of the Indian diaspora and others joined the MPs, who placed flowers at the monument.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, which carried out the attack, was given asylum and protection by the Pakistani government and was killed in Abbottabad near Pakistani military facilities by the US Navy’s elite SEAL unit.
Tharoor said the visit to the 9/11 memorial was “a reminder that this is a shared problem, but also out of a spirit of solidarity with the victims”.
The team sent “a very strong message that we are here in a city which is bearing the scars of that savage terrorist attack in the wake of yet another terrorist attack in our own country”, he said. (IANS)
