India, UK vow decisive action on terror groups

London: Asserting that terrorism cannot be associated with any religion, India and the UK on Wednesday vowed to strengthen cooperation in taking decisive action against globally-proscribed terror groups such as Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The strong pledge to combat terror was made after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart Theresa May held “fruitful discussions” on multiple aspects of the India-UK relations.

A 10 Downing Street statement said that the Syria air strikes, counter-terrorism, radicalisation and online extremism were among the key topics covered by both the leaders during their talks.

The two leaders reiterated their strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, including terrorism and terror-related incidents in both India and the UK, a joint statement issued after the talks said. Mr Modi and Ms May affirmed that terrorism cannot be justified on any grounds and it should not be associated with any religion, creed, nationality and ethnicity, it said.

The leaders agreed that terrorist and extremist organisations need to be denied space to radicalise, recruit and conduct attacks on innocent people and to achieve this end all countries need to work together to disrupt terrorist networks, their financing and movement of terrorists, including foreign terrorist fighters, the statement said.

Mr Modi and Ms May agreed to strengthen cooperation to take “decisive and concerted actions against globally-proscribed terrorists and terror entities to protect our citizens, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, ISIS (Da’esh) and their affiliates, as well as tackling the online radicalisation and violent extremism which feeds this”, it said.

The attack on ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia using a nerve agent last month in Salisbury also found a mention in the joint statement.