Bilawal Launches Personal Tirade Against PM Modi

NEW YORK, NY (IANS) – Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called for cooperation between New Delhi and Islamabad on terrorism but veered off into a personal vituperative tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi using extreme, unparliamentary language.

Asked by a Pakistani reporter at a news conference on December 15 about India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s accusations about Islamabad’s role in terrorism, he instead turned on Modi calling him derogatory names.

He dismissed Pakistan’s role in international terrorism, with an implied admission of its complicity, saying “Osama bin Laden is dead” and it is time to move on. “(I want to tell India) that Osama bin Laden is dead, but the butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the Prime Minister of India,” Bhutto said. He added: “He was banned from entering this country (US) until he became the Prime Minister. This is the Prime Minister of the RSS and the Foreign Minister of the RSS. What is the RSS? The RSS takes inspiration from Hitler’s ‘SS’.”

At his news conference before Bhutto-Zaradari’s, Jaishankar had said: “The truth is, everybody today sees them (Pakistan) as the epicenter (of terrorism).” He said sarcastically that after two-and-a-half years of the Covid pandemic, many have developed “brain fog” and added: “I assure you the world has not forgotten. Who has the fingerprints over a lot of (terrorist) activities in the region and beyond the region.”

Bhutto-Zardari said that Pakistan’s attempts to add four Indians to the international terrorist list were unsuccessful and said that it was because of the influence India wields and which he alleged was by playing on international perceptions of Islamic terrorism.

The Minister from Pakistan, which constitutionally is theocratic and has legal provisions, including for the death penalty, against even Muslims it considers non-believers, asserted that India was slipping away from secularism.

Bhutto-Zardari also said that there was no scope for rapprochement with India as long as Kashmir’s special status was not restored because there was “no domestic space” for such an initiative.