UNITED NATIONS (TIP): Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif raked up the Kashmir issue on Wednesday, September 21, at the United Nations General Assembly, glorifying slain Hizbul commander Burhan Wani as a “young leader” and demanding an “independent inquiry into the extra-judicial killings”.

India‘s response has been swift.Replying to Nawaz Sharif’s statement at the General Debate of 71st UNGA, India’s First Secretary Eenam Gambhir directly took on Pakistan calling it a terrorist state and a global epicenter of terrorism.

“The worst violation of human rights is terrorism. When practiced as an instrument of state policy it is a war crime,” said Gambir in India’s right of reply to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech, in which he had raised the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Gambhir’s response to what she described as Pakistan’s “long tirade” about the situation in J and K, expressed earlier in a speech by the country’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif, was short, furious, and unprecedented in its intensity and descriptions.

It also indicated a new Indian resolve to have Pakistan formally designated a nuclear proliferating terrorist state based on Islamabad’s use of terrorism as state policy and evidence of its nurturing of terror groups.

Reminding the UN of how so many terrorist attacks, including that on 9/11 in U.S., led to Pakistan, she said, “The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centers of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism.” There was a specific reference to the hunt for Osama bin Laden leading to Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was found and killed next to a Pakistan military garrison. Several other major terrorists including Mullah Omar, Ramzi Yousef, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, not to speak of numerous foot soldiers, including last week’s New York bomber, have found refuge and inspiration in Pakistan.

“It attracts aspirants and apprentices from all over the world. The effect of its toxic curriculum are felt across the globe,” Gambhir explained, as India for the first time brought to the world’s attention the fallout of Pakistan’s nurturing of terrorist groups that the U.N itself has recorded and proscribed.

“It is ironical therefore that we have seen today the preaching of human rights and ostensible support for self-determination by a country which has established itself as the global epicenter of terrorism,” she added in a reference to Sharif’s remarks on Jammu and Kashmir.

More humiliation followed as Gambhir also raised the issue of the international aid to Pakistan being diverted for terrorism, raising the possibility that New Delhi will now begin a campaign to cut off assistance on which Islamabad subsists.