A senior US Congressman has moved the bill in the House of Representatives demanding that Pakistan be designated as a state sponsor of terror, this days after the Financial Action Task Force retained Islamabad on the grey list over inadequate actions on probing and prosecuting terrorists.
Congressman Scott Perry is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. A retired brigadier general who flew 200 hours of combat sorties in a Chinook helicopter during his deployment in Iraq, Perry states, “Effective on the date that is 30 days after the date 4 of the enactment of this Act, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall be deemed to be a country the government of which the Secretary of State determines has repeatedly provided support for international terrorism.”
Perry referred to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who had accused Pakistan of harbouring members of Taliban, including the terrorists of Haqqani network.
“What we have to look at is an insistence that every country, to include Pakistan, make good on the expectations that the international community has of what is required of a Taliban-led government if it’s to receive any legitimacy of any kind or any support,” Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in September last year.
So Pakistan needs to line up with a broad majority of the international community in working toward those ends and in upholding those expectations,” Blinken had added.
A member of the sub-committee on Asia pacific, Perry had written to President John Biden seeking non-acceptance of Pakistan ambassador-designate Masood Khan, quoting his comments hailing terrorists and in support of terrorist outfits.
On March 5, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) retained Pakistan in its grey list and directed it to take stringent measures to crack down on UN-designated terrorist groups and stop terror financing.
“The FATF encourages Pakistan to continue to make progress to address, as soon as possible, the one remaining item by continuing to demonstrate that [terror financing] investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups,” the organisation said in a statement.
