EAM Sushma Swaraj address the OIC Council as ‘Guest of Honour’, while Pakistan lacks the guts to participate
Swaraj, who arrived in Abu Dhabi yesterday evening, was invited by HH Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Foreign Minister of UAE as a ‘Guest of Honour’ for 46th Foreign Ministers Meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, being the first Indian to get the honour.
“I stand here as a representative of a land, that has been for ages a fountain of knowledge, a beacon of peace, a source of faiths and traditions, and home to religions from the world & now, one of the major economies of the world”, said EAM Swaraj at the beginning of her address.
Sharing greetings of Prime Minister Modi and more than 185 million Muslim brothers and sisters from India, she said, “They are the microcosm of diversities in India. They speak numerous languages in India, have diverse culinary tastes, myriad choices of traditional attire, and they maintain strong cultural and linguistic heritage of the regions they loved and have lived for generations. It is this appreciation of diversity and co-existence that has ensured that very few Muslims in India have fallen prey to the poisonous propaganda of radical and extremist ideologies”.
Talking about Terrorism, Swaraj expressed, “We are living in times where the reach of terror is rising. We are seeing the senseless violence that terrorism can result in. We must act together, stand together to combat global terrorism. Terrorism and extremism bear different names and labels. It uses diverse causes. But in each case, it is driven by distortion of religion and a misguided belief in its power to succeed”.
This urging from EAM Swaraj comes amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, triggered by the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama last month. Pakistan chose not to participate in the meeting over India's presence.
