India on Friday said that it is disappointed that a technical hold has been put on its application to designate Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack, in the United Nations Committee.
"We are disappointed that a technical hold is being put on India's application to designate terror leader Masood Azhar in the UNSC Committee established under UNSC Resolution No 1267, 1989 and 2253," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
He said that India finds incomprehensible that while the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad was listed in the UNSC for its well known terror activities, the designation of the group's main leader, financier and motivator has been put on technical hold.
"The recent terror attack in Pathankot on January 2 has shown that India continues to bear the dangerous consequences of not listing Azhar," he said.
"Given the global networking of terrorist groups, this has implications for the entire international community," he said. On Thursday, China had requested the UN Committee, which is considering a ban on the JeM chief, to keep on hold the designation.
After the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase on January 2, India in February wrote to the UN calling for immediate action to list Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee.
The submission was armed with strong evidence of the outfit's terror activities and its role in the Pathankot attack that killed seven Indian military personnel. India also told the UN Sanctions Committee that not listing Azhar would expose it and other countries in South Asia to threats from the terror group and its leader.
"It needs no emphasis that the UNSC Resolution 1267 regime is an important building block of the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy that should aim to protect all member
states and their citizens from the activities of terror groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Azhar," the MEA spokesperson said in a statement.
"Its working methods, based on the principles of unanimity and anonymity, is leading the Committee to adopt a selective approach to combating terrorism. This does not reflect well on the determination that the international community needs to display to decisively defeat the menace of terrorism," he said.
