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All terror roads lead to Pakistan, says Rushdie

NEW YORK: Terming Pakistan as the centre of world terrorism, noted author Salman Rushdie has said the fact is that terrorist organisations are all based in that country.

Mr. Rushdie slammed Pakistan for its “cynical denial” that the terrorists involved in Mumbai strikes were not its nationals.

“The fact is the world’s terrorist organisations are all based in Pakistan. Taliban are there, Al-Qaeda are there, LeT is there. They are all there with the active support of the Pakistani intelligence,” he said while participating in a panel discussion at the Asia Society.

Referring to the remarks of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that three-fourths of terror plots had links to Pakistan and Al-Qaeda, Mr. Rushdie said Islamabad “can’t go on pretending that there is no evidence. That’s all garbage.”

He said “when the President of Pakistan pretends that there is no evidence against somebody, he is also complicit in that. It is time to say to Pakistan this has to stop. You can’t be a member of the free group of nations, if you are among the world’s sponsor of terrorism, which is what now they have been.”

The Mumbai strikes, he said, were marked by brutality by the attackers and incompetence of government and security agencies in responding to them.

Expressing scepticism that Islamabad would dismantle the terror groups, the panelists, during the discussion, said the world community should send a clear message to Pakistan that terrorists were becoming a liability to that country and it was in its own interest to dismantle them. The U.S. too came in for strong criticism for considering the former President, Pervez Musharraf, an “ally in fighting terrorism” and giving billions of dollars to him without any condition that the money should be used to fight terrorists.

The panelists recalled that Mr. Musharraf was responsible for aiding Lashkar-e-Taiba to fight in Kashmir during his years in the Army and Mr. Rushdie said he put up a western face to the Westerns but was mullah to extremists.

The participants strongly attacked Booker Prize winner Arundhiti Roy for linking the Mumbai terrorist attacks to Kashmir, Gujarat riots and demolition of Babri Masjid.

The panellists included former Bernard Schwartz Fellow Mira Kamdar, who lost her cousin and her cousin’s husband in the Mumbai attacks, and author of ‘Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found’ Suketu Mehta. — PTI

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