As part of India's global outreach initiative under 'Operation Sindoor', an all-party parliamentary delegation led by Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor arrived in Colombia on May 29. While addressing the delegation, Tharoor expressed his disappointment towards the Colombian government, which expressed heartfelt condolences on the loss of lives in Pakistan after India attacked Pakistan under Operation Sindoor.
Tharoor said, "We will say to our friends in Colombia, there can be no equivalence between those who dispatch terrorists and those who resist them. There can be no equivalence between those who attack and those who defend. We are only exercising our right of self-defence, and if there is any misunderstanding here on this core, we are here to dispel any such misunderstanding. We're very happy to talk to Colombia in some detail about the circumstances. We have, as I said, very concrete proof. In fact, when this terrorist attack occurred, it was immediately claimed by an organisation called The Resistance Front, which is a unit of the Lashkar-e-Taiba base in Muridke, Pakistan... Just as Colombia has endured many terror attacks, so have we in India. We have endured a very large number of attacks for almost four decades."
Pakistan provide terrorists safe haven to continue their training: Tharoor in Colombia
Shashi Tharoor said, "There (in Pakistan) was a well-publicised funeral of one of the terrorists on the sanctions list. That funeral was attended by uniformed senior military and police personnel from Pakistan. That is the extent of complicity that we are seeing between the terrorists who perpetrate crimes of this nature and those who finance, guide, train, arm and equip them and do provide them safe haven to continue their training and their other awful deeds."
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is leading the group of all-party MPs delegation, added that India suffered a grievous terrorist attack on April 22. When this happened, of course, the world rose up to condemn the terrorist attack, but that was as far as it went. There was no action taken, not even by the country where these people had emerged from, Pakistan. Nobody was arrested, and there was no attempt at any prosecution. India decided that this kind of outrage could not go unpunished.
Shashi Tharoor speaks on China supplying defence equipment to Pakistan
Shashi Tharoor says, "We are quite conscious that China supplies 81 per cent of all Pakistani defence equipment. Defence is a polite word, Pakistani military equipment. Much of it is not for defence but for attack. Every sovereign country has the right to do that. The single largest project in China's Belt and Road Initiative is in Pakistan, the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is a highway corridor connecting China to a port in southwestern Pakistan that permits goods to be transported relatively quickly and economically to western China. We are aware of that, and our concern is not with the rights of the Pakistani people to pursue development. Of course, they may do so, including with the partnership with China. Our quarrel is only with the perpetration of terror against us...".
India is not interested in 'war': Tharoor in Colombia
On the question of any third-country mediation, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, "...We received a number of phone calls from Senior United States officials and also from senior officials of other countries, of France, of UAE, of Saudi Arabia and so on. And the message we gave to all these countries was exactly the same. We are not interested in war. We were just conducting retribution for a terrorist attack. If they stop, we stop. If that message was then in turn conveyed by such countries to Pakistan, it may well have had an effect in persuading Pakistan to stop knowing that their stopping would also mean India would stop. So it's possible that that's what happened. But certainly there was no sort of active process of mediation that we are aware of. Certainly nothing involving us because we never intended to begin with from the very first day when the anti-terror strikes took place on the night of the 7th of May... We are not the belligerent power in this particular equation."
