New Delhi: National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval Thursday came down heavily on Pakistan and proposed an “action plan” against Pakistan-based terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed under the Shanghai Organisation Cooperation (SCO) framework, ThePrint has learnt.
Speaking at a meeting of NSAs of the SCO member countries in Dushanbe, Doval is believed to have underscored the need for adopting global standards to address the challenge of terror financing, top sources said.
The NSA also highlighted the need for SCO partnering closely with the Paris-based terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF), sources said.
The four-day FATF plenary is currently underway in Paris. The plenary, which is the highest decision-making body of the FATF, began Monday.
Doval’s remarks came just a day ahead of FATF plenary’s final call Friday on whether or not to blacklist Pakistan.
While the FATF had more or less ruled out the possibility of Pakistan getting blacklisted, Islamabad’s attempts to come out of the ‘grey list’ failed at the last February plenary due to “serious deficiencies” by the Pakistan government to check terror financing.
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What the NSA said
According to sources, NSA Ajit Doval strongly condemned terrorism in all forms. He especially highlighted that the perpetrators of terrorism, including cross-border terror attacks, “should be expeditiously brought to justice”.
Doval also called for “full implementation of UN resolutions and targeted sanctions against UN-designated terrorist individuals and entities”, at the SCO NSAs meeting that concluded Thursday in the Tajik capital.
He underscored the need to “monitor new technologies used by terrorists, including drones, for smuggling of weapons and misuse of dark web, artificial intelligence, blockchain and social media”, sources said.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi alleged that previous governments of his country did not take steps to curb money laundering and terrorist financing there.
The meeting, hosted by Tajikistan this year, was also attended by Pakistan NSA Moeed Yusuf. This was the first time when Doval and Yusuf met each other in person officially.
At the SCO NSAs meeting that took place virtually in September last year, Doval had walked out after the Pakistan NSA projected a map in the background that inaccurately depicted Jammu and Kashmir.
India had said then that Pakistan had shown “blatant disregard” to the SCO’s meeting norms, which was that year hosted by Russia and that Islamabad showed a “fictitious map”.
(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)
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