Pakistan has acknowledged that Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed, the Haqqanis and the LeT are liabilities for the country but it needs time and assets to get rid of them.
The statement comes amid New Delhi's sustained diplomatic pressure in exposing Islamabad internationally for its role in sponsoring terror activities on Indian soil. At the UN last week, India described Pakistan as a "pre-eminent export factory for terror".
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said that the US, which is putting pressure on Pakistan to deal with terrorist groups operating from its soil, once used to treat them as "darlings" just 20 to 30 years ago.
US President Donald Trump last month criticised Pakistan for its support to terror groups. "We have been paying Pakistan billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the terrorists," he said.
The US also listed Pakistan-backed Kashmiri outfit Hizbul Mujahideen as a foreign terrorist organisation. In July, the US branded Pakistan among nations providing "safe havens" to terrorists and terrorism.
"Don't blame us for the Haqqanis (the Haqqani terror network) and don't blame us for the Hafiz Saeeds (chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa terror group)," Khawaja Asif said at the Asia Society forum in New York on Wednesday.
"These were the people who were your darlings just 20 to 30 years back. They were being dined and wined in the White House and now you say go to hell Pakistanis because you are nurturing these people," he was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
It is very easy to say Pakistan is floating the Haqqanis and Hafiz Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They are liabilities, Asif said.
"I accept that they are liabilities, but give us time to get rid of them because we don't have the assets to match these liabilities and you are increasing them (our liabilities) further," the minister said.
Talking about Pakistan's sour relations with India, the minister said that a new initiative was needed to bring India and Pakistan to the negotiating table.
He said that the need to discuss all issues, including the decades-old Kashmir dispute — the main source of tension between the two countries.
On Monday, India displayed at the UN the picture of Lt. Umar Faiyaz and reminded the world how the young Kashmiri officer was brutally tortured and killed by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in May 2017. This was after a desperate Pakistan resorted to a blatant lie to take on India at the UNGA, but faced widespread embarrassment as it failed in its attempt to pass off a photo of a violence victim in Gaza as that of a Kashmiri girl.
(With PTI Inputs)
