The UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning an alleged plot, blamed by the US on elements in Iranian establishment to assassinate Saudi envoy to Washington, and asked Tehran to cooperate in the probe.
The resolution did not directly accuse Tehran of carrying out the plot, but it called on Iran “to comply with all of its obligations under international law, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, particularly with respect to its obligations to provide law enforcement assistance.”
This resolution received one hundred and six votes in favor, and nine votes against, while forty countries abstained.
Quite surprisingly India, which currently occupies the Chair of UN Security Council’s counter terrorism committee, abstained.
Our permanent representative to the United Nations, Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri said, “We have abstained on the resolution, as its substance deals with a specific case in which we are not in the possession of full facts and the mater is subjudice.”
This statement fails to convince any rational thought, as to how a country like India, which has been a victim of state sponsored terrorism for more than two decades, fail to support a resolution which merely calls upon a State to comply with all of its obligations under international law?
True, we may not have been in full possession of facts of the case, and matter was subjudice, but then what facts are required to impress upon a State to comply with all of its obligations under international law?
The specific case in question pertains to an attempt to assassinate Saudi envoy in Washington DC. Can any State in the world which genuinely condemns terrorism, afford to ignore the severity of the case?
Certainly, not all the one hundred and six countries which voted in favor of this resolution could have acted irrationally, if Mr. Puri’s defense is to be accepted as a rational justification for our abstinence.
Yes, this is yet another manifestation of our ‘weak kneeled’ foreign policy, which prevents us from taking the high moral ground even in such important intentional forums, because our national interests cannot be compromised at all. That we are looking at Iran for ensuring our energy security is only to well known.
But then, should we trade it off with something as critical as our uncompromising stand on terrorism, and develop ‘cold feet’ even where a reasonable demand is made on State such as this particular resolution on Iran?
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