BJP asks Centre to declare ISI terrorist organisation
NEW DELHI, Dec 27 (UNI): The BJP today asked the Government to "stop borrowing" Pakistan's expression of ''non-state actors'' and launched a frontal attack against the ISI, declaring the Pakistan Government's intelligence wing a "terrorist organization".
"We are sorry that our Government had done nothing substantial to make Pakistan deliver its promise of not to allow its territory to be used for terrorist attacks against India.
Pakistan is only denying its involvement and not delivering its commitment," BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad told newspersons.
He said there was evidence available that the sea-borne terrorists involved in the November 26 Mumbai attacks were all trained in the use of weapons, granades and explosives and this could not have happened without ''involvements of important segments of establishment in Pakistan".
They had used high quality GPS system for maritime operations, reaching Mumbai from Karachi, and received specialised training in both maritime and urban warfare aboard the 'PNS Iqbal', which imparted commando training, he added.
Prasad said "the participation of ISI officials'' in the birthday celebration of Dawood Ibrahim, the Indian fugitive living in exile in Pakistan was "a further proof of involvement" of the Pakistan establishment, adding the issue was no longer a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan but an issue of Pakistan's "emergence as the epicentre of world terror", he added.
He said India had issued a travel advisory to the citizens to avoid going to Pakistan, unless it was a case of grave emergency.
The Government should consider scaling down of staff in the High Commission in Pakistan to the barest minumum and recall India's High Commissioner in Pakistan.
It is time for taking such a step unitedly and for this to happen, the Government must speak in one voice.
He refused to state if the BJP supported "surgical strikes" in Pakistan by saying that it was for the Government of the day to decide upon the action because they had requisite information.
The BJP would extend all support and cooperation in all honest efforts to fight terror emanating from the other country, he assured.
Touching upon the elections in Jammu and Kashmir, he said the high voter turnout was a "big victory of democracy" in the light of fatwas to boycott the Assembly elections by the Hurriyat leaders, a conglamoration of secessionist parties.
People of the state had given a befitting reply to these leaders.
On his reaction about the reports of an imminent arrest of Congress MP Radhakant Naik in the killing of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati and his three followers in Orissa, Prasad said the BJP had always demanded an objective investigation into the killing of the Swami, which triggered off the unrest.
The Orissa CID was probing the murders.
"The authorities must proceed against any evidence of individual involvement," he added.