NEW DELHI: The US, UK, Germany, Belgium and France have decided to block Pakistan’s proposal to designate two Indians as ‘global terrorists’ at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
They had earlier put this proposal on hold for want of evidence but have now decided to block it completely. The UK, US and France are permanent members of the UN while Germany and Belgium are non-permanent.
Pakistan requested two Indian nationals Appaji Angara and Gobinda Patnaik Duggivalasa be designated as ‘global terrorists’.
On Wednesday, India’s permanent representative to the UN, T S Tirumurti tweeted-
It seems Pakistan is trying to hit back after India got Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist under the UNSC 1267 sanctions committee last year in May.
In July, Pakistan and China moved to add these two Indians as terrorists accusing them of terror attacks in Peshawar and Balochistan. They even filed an FIR in this regard.
This is not the first time Pakistan has made such a move, it had earlier tried to do the same to designate 2 other Indians as ‘terrorists’ at the UN. Currently, all 4 of these have now returned to India from Afghanistan.
While Appaji Angara has worked as a software developer in Afghanistan, Duggivalasa had worked as the head of a company trying to rebuild this war-torn country.
Pakistan accused Angara of mounting a terror attack at Mall Road in Lahore in February 2017 along with Jamat ul Ahrar, a splinter group of the Tehreek-e- Taliban, Pakistan. Additionally, Islamabad accuses Duggivalasa of planning a terror attack on a Pakistani politician Siraj Raisani in July 2018 in Mastung, Balochistan where 160 people died.