ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has acknowledged the presence of 19 terrorists figuring in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 1267 Sanctions List.
Pakistani authorities have told the UNSC panel that they cannot locate the rest of the terrorists due to insufficient information.
Prime Minister Khan-led government’s decision to delete some 4,000 names from its terror watch list has been a part of an orchestrated effort to scratch its terror record clean not just in the country, but also at the UNSC, observers familiar with the developments have said.
Pakistani authorities told a visiting UNSC monitoring committee that the country had been unable to act against several individuals listed in the world body’s sanctions list as the UN panel had given insufficient information about the terrorists.
The UNSC 1267 Sanctions List has some 130 names from Pakistan.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has acknowledged the presence of 19 of them such as Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba founder.
Islamabad has moved the UNSC to delist some 6 terrorists, including Matiur Rehman, who has been described in UN records of 2013 as chief operational commander of terror group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, according to a senior official in North Block, which houses India’s internal security establishment.
The UNSC team was on a five-day visit to Pakistan last month, and it was told that the UN Sanctions List failed to have the nationality, date of birth, national ID number, passport number or address of the people sanctioned for their terror links.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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