India may consider to give Pakistan due credit for action against terror groups
New Delhi: After Pakistan has taken cognisable action against India-focussed terror groups, India may recognise its western neighbour’s changed stance.
The change seems to have emerged after Pakistan was put on the “grey list” by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) a year ago, The Hindu reported.
An official said Pakistan has seized 771 seminaries — educational institutions run by terror outfits—Lashkar-e-Taiba and its fronts, Jamaat-ud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniyat, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
“It is for the first time since the early 1990s that Pakistan has begun to take action against India-focussed terror groups and freeze their assets,” a senior government official said. The contemporary Kashmir insurgency dates back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Pakistan started to act on terror outfits as it feared getting blacklisted by the FATF.
FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 by the Ministers of its member jurisdictions.
The objectives of the FATF are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
The FATF is, therefore, a “policy-making body” which works to generate the necessary political will to bring about national legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas.
India, US, UK, France, China are the member countries of the FATF among others but Pakistan stands out.
The plenary session of FATF is scheduled from June 16 to 21 which shall witness the participation of nations including the Indian team comprising officials of External Affairs and Home Affairs ministries.
In the past, India had taken a passive stand in FATF as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France engaged actively to “grey list” Pakistan. Islamabad, however, has accused India of meddling into review meetings and dictating actions against it.
Pakistan was on the “grey list” of countries of risk between 2012 and 2015 as well.
Deputy Foreign Minister of France Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Minister of State V Muraleedharan in the capital on Monday.
Lemoyne said that counter-terrorism remained the focus of Indo-France engagements. The meeting concerned PM Modi’s visit to France in August as French President Emmanuel Macron’s special invitee to take part in G-7 summit.
