Sushma Swaraj said the developed nations must lift the deprived with financial and technical resources
Addressing the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said today that the biggest challenges the world faces currently are climate change and terrorism. She slammed Pakistan for "spawning grounds for terrorism", saying the country sheltered Osama Bin Laden. She said Pakistan's commitment to terrorism as an instrument of official policy has not abated one bit. She assured the Assembly that India would achieve its sustainable development goals much before time.
Here are the top quotes of Sushma Swaraj's speech at UN General Assembly:
The biggest challenge of our era comes from the existential threats of climate change and terrorism.
If we have to save the world from the adverse effects of climate change, then developed nations must lift the deprived with financial and technical resources.
In our case, terrorism is bred not in some faraway land, but across our border. Our neighbour's expertise is not restricted to spawning grounds for terrorism; it is also an expert in trying to mask malevolence with verbal duplicity.
We are accused of sabotaging the process of talks. This is a complete lie. We believe that talks are only rational means to resolve the most complex of disputes. Talks with Pakistan have begun many times. If they stopped, it was only because of their behavior.
America had declared Osama bin Laden its most dangerous enemy, and launched an exhaustive, worldwide search to bring him to justice. What America perhaps could not comprehend was that Osama would get sanctuary in a country that claimed to be America's friend and ally: Pakistan
Who can be a greater transgressor of human rights than a terrorist? Those who take innocent human lives in pursuit of war by other means are defenders of inhuman behavior, not of human rights. Pakistan glorifies killers; it refuses to see the blood of innocents.
Last year, Pakistan's representative, using right to reply, displayed some photographs as "proof" of "human rights violations" by India. The photographs turned out to be from another country. Similar false accusations have become part of its standard rhetoric.
Each year, for last five years, India has been arguing from this podium that lists are not enough to check terrorists and their protectors. We need to bring them to accountability through international law
On the one hand, we want to fight terrorism; on the other, we cannot define it. This is why terrorists with a price on their head are celebrated, financed and armed as liberation heroes by a country that remains a member of the United Nations
At the heart of Prime Minister Modi's transformative vision is a radical idea: that the uplift of any nation is best achieved through the all-round empowerment of women. All the schemes that I have just spoken about have welfare of women at their core.
