Pakistan rejects India's allegations, rakes up Samjhauta blasts

Pakistan Monday said it firmly rejects India's "baseless allegations" about "mainstreaming of terrorism" regarding the Lahore rally by terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed and also the "equally baseless allegations and efforts to malign Pakistan by implicating it in the recent attacks" in Jammu and Kashmir.

In response to a question about comments by India's external affairs ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin, Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said: "We have taken serious note of the remarks made by the spokesperson of the Indian MEA."

To a query, Aslam said Pakistan has been in the forefront of combating terrorism and is also its biggest victim.

The spokesperson also raked up the Samjhauta Express terror blasts of 2007 to which some right-wing Hindu activists were linked, and said: "On the contrary, if any evidence of mainstreaming of terrorism in India was needed, one only had to look at the perpetrators of Samjhauta Express terrorist attack and its masterminds."

She also raked up the Kashmir issue, saying "Pakistan takes its obligations under the UN Security Council mandate very seriously, unlike India as manifested by its failure to implement the UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir".

"We also reject the equally baseless allegations and efforts to malign Pakistan by implicating it in the recent attacks in Indian Occupied Kashmir. The recent verdict of court martial on fake encounter of 2010 exposes the hollowness of the Indian infiltration claims."

She said the recent violence in Indian Kashmir "is the result of decades of repressive Indian policies and imposition of sham elections in Indian Kashmir, an exercise in futility.

"India has to understand that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would accept nothing short of their right to self-determination, promised to them by the United Nations Security Council and accepted by India and the International community."

On Friday, Akbaruddin had strongly criticised Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed holding a two-day rally in Lahore, terming it as "nothing short of mainstreaming of terrorism".

He said the fact that Saeed held a two-day ijtema of his proscribed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) at a national monument with a large number of police standing guard despite being a designated terrorist entity highlighted "blatant disregard for the global norms evolving against terrorism".

The Pakistan government had run two special trains to transport people to Lahore for the JuD's congregation that began Thursday.

The spokesperson said: "We describe it as nothing short of mainstreaming of terrorism".