LAHORE – The United States was dismayed when India moved a proposal for a United Nations Security Council designation of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) as a terrorist organisation, concerned that the move would stymie its own efforts to push through a “more ambitious list” of designations, Indian newspaper The Hindu reported on Friday.
The Security Council’s 1267 Committee, or the Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee, designated the JuD on December 11, 2008, a day after India moved the proposal, the newspaper reported. It also designated the JuD leader Hafiz Saeed, the group’s operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and two others associated with it, Haji Mohammed Ashraff and Mohammed Ahmed Bahaziq, the newspaper said.
The US eventually threw its weight behind the designation – else the proposal could not have been approved – but a diplomatic cable sent on December 10, 2008 (182185: confidential) by the US Embassy in New Delhi, which the newspaper said it accessed through WikiLeaks, revealed its unhappiness at being pre-empted by India.
The newspaper reported that Ted Osius, Political Counselor at the US Embassy in New Delhi, cabled that at a meeting with External Affairs Ministry Joint Secretary TCA Raghavan that day, he had expressed “dismay at [the Indian government’s] actions at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, when it publicly called for designation of Jamaat-ud- Dawa”.
The diplomat explained to Raghavan that the move would “complicate” the US effort to “get an even more ambitious list of designations through the UNSC 1267 Sanctions Committee”, said the newspaper. The cable did not mention the inclusions in the “ambitious list”, the newspaper reported.
Osius wrote that “Raghavan defended [India’s] action and dismissed [US] concerns”, and the Indian official argued that the US and Indian proposals were “not mutually exclusive”, and that it did not matter which one the 1267 Committee acted on first, The Hindu reported.
According to the newspaper, the joint secretary told Osius that India hoped the move would further pressure Pakistan to act against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks and at the same time, it was a message to the Indian public that its government is getting things done. Raghavan explained to the US diplomat that “if China and Pakistan intend to cooperate, designations would move forward”, the newspaper reported.
Two previous attempts by the US to have the JuD designated – in 2006, and in 2008, months before the Mumbai attacks – had failed. On both occasions, China put the proposal on “technical hold,” demanding to see more evidence against the group and the individuals, the newspaper said.
