India calls for efforts to combat terror funding

India calls for efforts to combat terror funding
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Yedla Umasankar
Highlights

In a veiled attack on Pakistan, India has condemned any direct or indirect financial assistance to terrorists and terror groups by nations that enables them to pursue their activities, including in defending criminal cases against them.

United Nations : In a veiled attack on Pakistan, India has condemned any direct or indirect financial assistance to terrorists and terror groups by nations that enables them to pursue their activities, including in defending criminal cases against them.

Speaking at a General Assembly Sixth Committee meeting on 'measures to eliminate international terrorism', First Secretary/ Legal adviser in India's Permanent Mission to the UN Yedla Umasankar on Wednesday called for increased cooperation between the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the UN to combat terror financing.

"The flow of resources meant to produce terror are required to be stopped by States for which collective inter-State efforts are required at regional and sub-regional levels.

The FATF has a significant role in setting global standards for preventing and combating terrorist financing and the UN needs to increase cooperation with such bodies," Umasankar said.

He said India "strongly" condemns "direct or indirect financial assistance given to terrorist groups or individual members thereof by States or its machineries, to pursue their activities, including in defending the criminal cases involving terrorist acts against them."

India's comments came as on Pakistan's request, Mumbai attack mastermind and banned JuD chief Hafiz Saeed was allowed by an anti-terror committee of the UN Security Council to withdraw money from his bank account for basic expenses.

Saeed, a UN designated terrorist on whom the US has placed a USD 10-million bounty, was arrested on July 17 this year in a terror financing case in Pakistan. He was listed under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008.

Umasankar said India strongly believes that terrorism can be countered by combined international efforts, stressing that the UN is best suited for developing this transnational effort.

He lamented that current measures to combat terrorism are having little impact on the ground. "The Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) being discussed by the UN General Assembly over the last decade has resulted in little impact on the ground.

The Sanctions Committees established by the UN Security Council have become selective tools due to opaque working methods and politicized decision making," he said.

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