New Delhi:
India's National Security Advisor, Shivshankar Menon, has said that the nexus between terror and the Pakistani establishment is getting stronger. He added that clear links between Pakistan's establishment and Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley have been established during Headley's recent interrogation by Indian investigators. Menon was addressing an international conference on terrorism in New Delhi.
Here's a full transcript of his address to the ORF Heritage Foundation Dialogue.
For us what you do in India is crucial, situated as we are beside the epicentre of global terrorism. Looking at the situation around us , since we met last, two or three things stand out. One is, unfortunately, much of what you discussed, and what you foresaw has actually not just hit us in (a) more virulent form, but has actually come true. It's some of your worst thoughts, (that) have come true, unfortunately.
It's today actually even less possible to be optimistic about the success of existing counter-terrorism strategies in South Asia, in Pakistan or Afghanistan, not because we don't understand the problem or because strategies are intrinsically flawed. We know what needs to be done, and I think we also know who is responsible for terrorism, but I think what's happened is that we have a much clearer picture today of the infrastructure of the terrorism, of the ecosystem that supports terrorism, which frankly is not just confined to South Asia but affects entire world. For us it's been brought home most recently by what we learnt from Headley which confirms many of the things which we knew before. And it's really the links between the official establishment and with existing intelligence agencies, it's that nexus which makes it a much harder phenomenon for us to deal with. Unfortunately what we know and what we see suggests that these links or this nexus in fact will not be broken soon. If anything, it is getting stronger.
The other aspect, which I think is something worth looking at, is how over time, over the last few years, the terrorist groups in South Asia have actually fused not just operationally but in ideological terms - they train together, they use same communications, and you have a phenomenon where frankly it's impossible to segment these groups anymore. And the traditional distinctions that were used about groups, which are targeted differently or their composition is different, I think, those distinctions have become meaningless. I think, we know, that they have.
The third thing that I would like to flag at this stage, right in the beginning of what you doing, is really the role of nuclear weapons in terrorist hands and likelihood of that. I notice you have a separate session on that , and I think that's really a very important issue. For us again that's a problem which not just hasn't gone away, its probably more serious today than it has been before. It was bad enough to start with, but rather than spreading gloom and listing all this terrible things that you should be looking at, there are two aspects which we are now better off than we were when we met last year.
Firstly, we have learnt lessons, both the US and India, and I think what we both have been trying to do is to put in place the institution, the policies and the practices which would help us to deal with this.
In India for instance, we've not just established NIA to investigate terrorist crimes, but we have also created a multi-agency centre which collates and disseminates information against one, terrorism and two , the forces and agencies concerned, and we have set up national intelligence grid. We are also in the process of designing national counter terrorism centre, so that's something where, I think, both of us have evolving structure actually. And I think it will useful if we talk to each other about that and how that works in both of our countries.
We need to certainly improve the instruments that we have. I mean, we are involved in police reforms of various kinds, but its more than police reforms. That's an aspect which I think it would be very interesting to hear your views, and to see where we can take it.