India on Wednesday gave a clarion call for a strong response and broad-based international cooperation against terrorism, asking the international community to deny the use of territories to terrorists and reject the notion that any cause can justify the scourge.
Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is representing India at the 61st Session of the UN General Assembly, in his address to the assembly stressed the need for sustained and specific cooperation by a variety of national, regional and global agencies to defeat terrorism.
Lamenting the inadequate collective global response to terrorism, Mukherjee said the multiple ways in which terrorism challenges the core principles of humanity and the mandate of the United Nations, were underlined by the outrages perpetrated in India over the last few months.
Referring to the Mumbai bomb blasts, he said that barely two months ago, in a single black day, more than 200 lives were lost and more than 1,000 injured by dastardly bombings in Mumbai and elsewhere in India.
These and other such incidents of outrage were clearly designed to spread maximum terror among ordinarily people. And ours is not the only country to be singled out by vicious and senseless acts of murder, he said.
"A strong response to terrorism requires broad-based international cooperation denying the space available to terrorists, and increasing the capability of states to address terrorist threats. It requires sustained and specific cooperation by a variety of national, regional and global agencies," he said.
He urged the international community to "collectively and unanimously" reject the notion that any cause can justify terrorism.
"No cause can ever justify the targeted killing of innocent men, women and children. The international community must signal that it will no longer tolerate the actions of the sponsors and abettors of terrorism or of those who wilfully fail to prevent terrorists from utilising their territories. We hope that the strategy would provide the impetus to unite the international community in its fight against terrorism via practical measures that facilitate cooperation by way of extradition, prosecution, information exchange and capacity building," he added.
