 Atul Sharma
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 26: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar delivered a sharp, no-holds-barred rebuff to a Pakistani journalist who tried to hijack a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday with a loaded question on terrorism.
Jaishankar was fielding questions alongside Liberia's Foreign Affairs Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti at an event on the Group of Friends on Safety and Security of Shipping and Seafarers, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's 81st session. The briefing had been billed as remarks-only, but that didn't stop a Pakistani reporter from breaking in as the event wound down, demanding: "When will your government stop sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan?"
Jaishankar didn't flinch. "A terrorist country is asking me that question. Come on," he shot back — a line that instantly set the tone for the room.
India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Harish Parvathaneni, moved in to close the exchange, telling the reporter bluntly: "You have heard your reply. You have heard your response, loud and clear."
The confrontation came barely a day after an Indian journalist had cornered Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the UN building's entrance with an equally pointed question: "When will you stop harbouring terrorists?"
Jaishankar is currently in New York leading India's delegation for the High-Level Week of UNGA's 81st session, with a High-Level Session address scheduled for Saturday alongside a packed calendar of bilateral and plurilate The confrontation came barely a day after an Indian journalist had cornered Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the UN building’s entrance with an equally pointed question: “When will you stop harbouring terrorists?”
New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of giving safe harbour to terrorist groups operating from Pakistani soil, repeatedly demanding credible, verifiable action against cross-border terrorism. India has defended its military response to the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam attack — which claimed 26 civilian lives — as a legitimate exercise of self-defence, launching Operation Sindoor to strike terrorist infrastructure across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The Pahalgam attack has since found mention in outcome documents across multiple global forums, including a UN Security Council press statement issued in April 2025. The Resistance Front (TRF) — which India calls a front for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba — was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States on July 18, 2025. India has consistently linked TRF to the Pahalgam attack, a connection also flagged in the UN Security Council's 36th monitoring report under the 1267 Sanctions Committee, released last July.
Pakistan has been placed on the Financial Action Task Force's grey list three separate times, most recently facing enhanced monitoring from June 2018 to October 2022 — a period during which it was pushed to tighten mechanisms for identifying and disrupting terror financing. India has repeatedly pointed to that scrutiny as the reason Pakistan was compelled to act against several designated terrorists and terror-financing networks, including figures tied to the 2008 Mumbai attacks. | 