Pak Foreign Min “Spokesperson of Terror Industry”: EAM S. Jaishankar

Goa: Foreign Minister S Jaishankar termed his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as the “promoter, justifier and spokesperson of a terrorism industry”.

Jaishankar’s comments come on a day when five Indian Army soldiers were killed in action during an operation to find terrorists hiding in a forest near Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch. The terrorists, suspected to be Pakistanis, had ambushed an army truck last week, killing five other soldiers.

“Victims of terrorism do not sit together with its perpetrators to discuss terrorism,” Jaishankar said after a meeting of foreign ministers of the member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Goa.

“Bhutto Zardari came as Foreign Minister of a SCO member state; that’s part of multilateral diplomacy and we don’t see anything more than that,” Mr Jaishankar said.

The two foreign ministers did not hold a bilateral at the SCO meeting.

“On terrorism, Pakistan’s credibility is depleting even faster than its forex reserves,”  Jaishankar said in a clear swipe at Pakistan’s struggle with a huge financial crisis that has forced the country to knock from door to door for loans.

Mr Zardari, the son of assassinated Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is the first Pakistani Foreign Minister to visit India in nearly 12 years.