Pak must end distinction bet good and bad terrorists: Tharoor

Lalit K Jha

Washington, Oct 20 (PTI) Underlining that New Delhi has
not seen any change in Pakistan's attitude towards terrorists
working against India, a top Indian minister has said
Islamabad must end the distinction between "good and bad
terrorists".

"One of the concerns we've had in recent years is that
there appears to have been a tendency in some parts of the
Pakistani establishment to think there are good terrorists and
bad terrorists," said Shahshi Tharoor, the Minister of State
for External Affairs.

"The good terrorists are the guys who go off and bomb
Indians, and kill Indians in India. And the bad terrorists are
the ones who attack Pakistani interests, whether in
Afghanistan or inside Pakistan," Tharoor told the CNN in an
interview on Sunday.

The Congrss Party MP from Thiruvananthapuram said "in
other words, you blow up the Taj Mahal Hotel, you're a good
guy. You blow up the Marriott in Islamabad, you're a bad guy".

"Now, that sort of distinction, which I'm not saying is
held at the highest levels of government, but certainly has
been held in some elements on that side of the border -- that
distinction must disappear," asserted Tharoor, the first-time
MP from Kerala.

When asked about the recent military action by Pakistan
Army against the Taliban and terrorists, Tharoor said: "If
what we are seeing now with the assault on Pakistani military
headquarters clinches the argument once and for all, then it
will be a case, we believe, of Dr. Frankenstein really
deciding he has to execute his own monster".

The Indian minister reiterated that India has not seen
much change in "Pak’s attitude when it comes to taking action
against terrorists who have been responsible for terrorist
attacks against India".

"There is difference between what they say and what they
actually do", he charged.

The Minister of State for External Affairs said India
asked for credible action to bring the perpetrators of the
Mumbai carnage to justice and credible action to dismantle the
infrastructure of terror from which attacks had repeatedly
been launched in India over the last couple of decades.

"Now, frankly, we haven't seen enough action on either,"
Tharoor told the American news channel.

"On the perpetrators of 26 /11, there are seven people
behind bars. It's said they'll be brought to trial. That's
fine, but it's not enough," he underlined.

According to the minister, there are others, including
"the masterminds", such as the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, "who is not only running
around free to incite hatred and preach mayhem and murder in
my country, but has just been released by a Pakistani court
after a feeble attempt to prosecute him".

"Now, this sort of thing does worry us. We want to see
some really clear and firm action," the former UN diplomat
said.

Responding to a question from the India-born host Fareed
Zakaria, Tharoor said there were too many examples in the
recent past of the right rhetoric -- "even the freezing of
bank accounts, which they now immediately open up under other
names, the banning of organizations which are promptly
reinvented under other labels".

"That sort of -- we've seen that movie before," he said.

"What we want now is something new, something clear,
something that shows within Pakistan that it's a clean break
from the condoning, at the very least, if not the actual
leading, of terrorist actions against India," he said. PTI LKJ
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