Asserting that there is no good or bad terrorist, a top American diplomat on Wednesday said the United States was “greatly concerned” over the release of Mumbai attacks mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and had sought his re-arrest.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Nisha Desai Biswal, said Secretary of State John Kerry had personally called up authorities in Pakistan seeking the re-arrest after his release earlier this month.
However, she said Pakistan has lost more lives to terrorism than any other country and that Islamabad has “redoubled” its effort to fight the menace after the attack on a Peshawar Army school.
“We were greatly concerned by the release of Lakhvi,” she said, addressing a small group of journalists and students at the University of Chicago Center.
Biswal said the release was something that the State Department had been hoping to avoid and it had consistently impressed upon their counterparts in Islamabad the need for those responsible for Mumbai terror attacks to be brought to justice.
“That is the goal we share with India. When this release occurred, the Secretary of State, in fact, personally also made a phone call to urge that efforts be made to re-arrest and ensure that he does not roam free,” she said.
Biswal said the US continues to support India’s efforts to bring the Mumbai attackers to justice to seek justice to all those who died in that attack which includes American citizens as well.
“We also continue to impress upon all friends across the region that there is no such thing as a good terrorist or a bad terrorist. There are only terrorists and support of terrorists of any kind is not acceptable,” she said.
The Indian-origin American official said the attacks in Peshawar brought home the devastation in ways that are just incredibly powerful.
“I think you have seen redoubled efforts in Pakistan as well to deal with this issue of terrorism,” she said, adding that US was “of course” not satisfied by the progress made. Do we think that progress (on Pakistan’s efforts to tackle terrorism) is satisfactory? Of course not. We want to see more and we want to see more across the board,” Biswal said.
She said terrorism anywhere, be it in Pakistan, Afghanistan or India, is not acceptable.
“It is not acceptable state of being. We will continue to press on that. We will continue to find ways to address these concerns in a way we can to bring pressure to bear where we must,” she said.
Biswal underlined that this is a shared endeavour not only between the US and India, but also between the US and Pakistan.
“More Pakistani citizens have lost their lives to terrorism, frankly, than anywhere else,” she said, adding that this is a issue of security for across the region and the US will continue to prioritise it.
