PAK, INDIA SPAR OVER TERROR TAG AT UN MEET

NEW DELHI: India is the mother of terrorism in South Asia and “a racist and fascist ideology is firmly embedded” in the Modi government, Pakistan said in response to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech at UN.

India sponsored and aided terrorism against all its neighbours, reports in the Pakistani media quoted its permanent representative to UN, Maleeha Lodhi, as saying. Lodhi attacked the BJP and raked up Kashmir once again.

New Delhi’s “current political luminaries belong to a political organisation that has the blood of thousands of Muslims of Gujarat on their hands”, Lodhi said, referring to the 2002 Gujarat riots.

India was ruled by a fascist ideology and it should stop supporting across-the-border terrorism, she said exercising Pakistan’s right to reply at the UN.

Addressing the UN general assembly on Saturday, Swaraj tore into the neighbouring country, calling Pakistan a “pre-eminent exporter of terror”.

Pakistan was open to resuming a comprehensive dialogue with India but it should include Kashmir, Lodhi said as she waved a picture of a woman whose face was scarred, with what looked like pellet-gun wounds. Later, it was found that the photo was taken by award-winning photographer Heidi Levine inside the Gaza strip in 2014, and the girl had been injured in an Israeli air strike.