Poisoned pens don't work for too long: Syed Akbaruddin takes dig at Pakistan

In a veiled reference to Pakistan, India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Syed Akbaruddin took a dig saying that "poisoned pens don't work for too long".

"There may be somebody wanting to bring an issue which they have raised before. It is for every country to determine its trajectory, how it wants to approach global platforms. There may be some who stoop low, our response then is we soar high," he said while speaking to reporters here.

His reply came into a question about prospects of Kashmir issue being raised at United Nations by Pakistan.

"We have seen them..mainstream terrorism in the past...and what you are now telling me that they may want to mainstream hate speech. It is their call if they want to do that. Poisoned pens don't work for too long. We are confident that we will soar. We have given you examples of how we will not stoop (low)," he said.

On being about using Right of Reply after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's speech in the upcoming UNGA session, the Indian diplomat quipped, "It is a bad tactic to tell everybody what tactical approach you will apply. You will appreciate, you may call me anything, I am not a bad tactician."

Akbaruddin said that India's focus has been to engage with developing countries with regards to climate action.

"While our focus is on engaging the developing countries, we are sui-generis as a country as we are able to engage at the level of developing countries, also engage with many developed countries as partners. And one way which we have done is to have coalitions which are broad-based and which cut across as developing and developed the world," he said.

"The coalition for disaster resilient infrastructure is a coalition which is in the making, which will bring about some of the G-20 countries, some of the developing countries which are not in the G-20 but who perhaps are exposed to the vagaries of the nature and their infrastructure gets destroyed very quickly when there are these huge catastrophic climatic events," said Akbaruddin while speaking about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's participation in UN Climate Action Summit on September 23.

The senior diplomat said that their effort is to see if "we can bring together this coalition because climate action also requires us to build better and also build best at the beginning so that we don't have to build better when there is a crisis."

On being asked if there will be an announcement during that time (UN Climate Action Summit), he said, "I can't steal the thunder of announcements. You are aware of the multi-faceted activities we are undertaking on the ground on climate-related issues."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23.