NEW DELHI: A day after Beijing extended its technical hold by three months in the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Pakistani terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a designated terrorist by the United Nations, New Delhi on Friday hoped that countries sharing its concerns over international terrorism would cooperate in fighting all forms of terror.
Reacting to China’s move, External Affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said, "We can only hope that all these countries which share our concerns regarding the menace of international terrorism will cooperate in fighting all forms of terrorism."
Baglay claimed that Azhar had been involved in carrying out terror activities against India and this was a well-known fact.
In February China had blocked the US move to include the Pathankot terror attack mastermind in the list of global terrorists and its deadline on its technical hold was until August 2.
While reacting on China's aggressive posturing on Dokalam incident, Baglay maintained that India will continue to engage with China diplomatically and has been coordinating with Bhutan to find a mutually-acceptable solution to the vexed issue.
"We continue to engage with China through diplomatic channels to find a mutually acceptable solution," Baglay said while adding that “Our objective is to achieve peace and tranquillity and it will be achieved through diplomacy. However, he refused to react anything China’s claim on reducing troops from the faceoff site, by calling it an operational matter.
On Masood Azhar issue, Beijing is the permanent member of the Security Council, has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the JeM leader under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. JeM has already been on the banned list. In March 2016, out of 15 members of Security Council, only China rejected India’s bid to place Azhar on the 1,267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban.