Terrorism is one of the foremost threats to international peace and security as it maims and kills “our citizens”, and undermines the ability to attain development goals, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday.
Addressing the 18th mid-term ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) here, Swaraj also pushed for reforms of the United Nations Security Council.
She said that no effort to reform the UN will be complete without reforms of the United Nations Security Council. India had been strongly pushing for completing the long-pending reforms of the powerful Security Council. Swaraj said that terrorism is one of the foremost threats to international peace and security. “It maims and kills our citizens and undermines our ability to attain our development goals.
“Unfortunately, the talks about combating terrorism have not been matched by our actions. The strengthening and implementation, without double standards of existing international laws and mechanisms to fight the menace of terrorism is an imperative,” the Minister said.
The meeting was chaired by Jorge Arreaza, Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In 1996, India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as a way to strengthen the existing legal framework. Yet after more than two decades, discussions have made little progress even while terrorists continue to operate with greater impunity and inhumanity, the minister said.