PremiumNew Delhi: Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar on Sunday credited the Narendra Modi government for ensuring Pakistan is included in the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) grey list and also for highlighting that terrorism must be treated as a global issue and not just a problem faced by a few countries.
The minister also said the Modi government had stood firm on two occasions when it was challenged by China.
"Now the world knows, India will not bow down to pressure from China," he said.
Jaishankar was addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders' training programme on the Modi government’s foreign policy, ANI reported. The session was aimed at acquainting the BJP MPs about the government’s various foreign policy initiatives to help BJP MPs to counter opposition charges in the monsoon session of parliament beginning on Monday.
The minister added that it was due to the Modi government’s efforts that sanctions were imposed on groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) at the global level. Through international meets like the G7 or G20, Prime Minister Modi had impressed on the international community that terrorism be looked at as an issue of global concern.
On India’s “Neighbourhood First" policy, the minister said India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made efforts to have cordial relations with neighbouring countries.
"FATF as all of you know keeps a check on funding for terrorism and deals with black money supporting terrorism. Due to us, Pakistan is under the lens of FATF and it was kept in the grey list," Jaishankar was quoted as saying by ANI.
“We have been successful in pressurizing Pakistan and the fact that Pakistan's behaviour has changed is because of pressure put by India by various measures. Also terrorists from LeT and JeM, India's efforts through UN, have come under sanctions," Jaishankar reportedly said.
"PM's personal efforts made at forums like G20 or G7 made nations realize that terrorism is everyone's problem," Jaishankar was quoted as saying by ANI through unidentified sources.
"India ensured that the world should be concerned about terrorism and that other countries should stop seeing terrorism as a domestic problem of certain nations or law and order problem of particular nations," Jaishankar told the BJP leaders according to sources.
India’s efforts also help focus global attention on the issue of black money, Jaishankar said.
On challenges faced by India in the foreign policy arena, Jaishankar said: "Two examples of challenges we faced are with China."
“One was in Doklam where China had to go back and the second is when they tried infringing LAC (the Line of Actual Control) in Ladakh. This happened around the time when we were facing covid-19 spread (in May 2020). Despite this, we gave an appropriate reply on the ground and also held negotiations in coordination with the defence ministry," people familiar with matte quoted Jaishankar as saying according to ANI.
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