Author: Special Correspondent
Publication: The Hindu
Date: May 3, 2011
URL: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1986388.ece
For a change, the Congress and the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) appeared to be in agreement while responding to questions
on the killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.
The Congress said it underscored India's long-held
position that terrorists had been finding protection on the soil of its western
neighbour; the BJP stressed that Osama's death in Pakistan proved what India
had said repeatedly: "Pakistan is the epicentre of global terrorism."
"The neutralisation of Osama underscores
the point India has been making for three decades," Congress spokesperson
Manish Tewari said here on Monday, adding, "terrorist organisations of
various shades have been finding space and protection on Pakistani soil."
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government,
he said, had repeatedly told its international interlocutors that "the
terror infrastructure is seamless, and that it is perhaps not appropriate
to make a distinction between different kinds of terror."
The BJP, on its part, lost no time in repeating
its demand for the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack in Mumbai to be handed
to India for trial and justice. Chief party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad
said India must ensure that all those responsible for the Mumbai attack be
handed over to India, as Pakistan which had given shelter to this "most
dangerous and visible face of global jihadi terror," and repeatedly exported
terror to other countries, especially India, cannot be expected to do this
job.
The Congress spokesperson, meanwhile, in answer
to a question, said India had already conveyed to Pakistan the need for strong
and quick action against the accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. The
standards of prevention of terror applied on Pakistan's western borders, Mr.
Tewari said, needed to be applied to its eastern borders as well.
"The fight against terrorism has to be
holistic and globally coordinated to bring the guilty to justice," he
added.
BJP's Mr. Prasad did not spare the United
States either. He said it needed to "reflect" on the fact that though
Pakistan was its declared ally in the war on terror, it has acknowledged that
it did not - or could not - share information with Pakistan that it had zeroed
in on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and was launching an operation to kill
him.
Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj was
quickest off the mark, placing a comment on Twitter: "Humanity's enemy
number one" had been killed, her tweet read.
