India expects Pakistan to bring fundamentalists and terror suspects to book and dismantle the infrastructure in its territory that is being used to launch terror attacks on Indian soil, Union Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shashi Tharoor said on Friday.
While the Pakistani government had begun taking steps on the first, it was yet to act seriously on the long-term requirement of removing terror infrastructure, he added.
Mr. Tharoor was speaking at a “tweetup” – a meeting organised for enthusiasts of the social networking medium “Twitter” – at the C.P.Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation.
At the informal discussion with around 30 tweeters from here, Mr. Tharoor downplayed the controversies relating to his tweets in the recent times.
Though he had never run into trouble and had in fact been appreciated for his media interactions in his earlier assignments, he said he understood that “the success of a jest lies in the ear of the listener.”
He had decided to tone down his statements not as a measure of self-censoring, but as a result of recognising that the political discourse and media interactions had different rules of engagement, he said.
In a country where only 10 per cent of the population had access to the internet, it was natural to have misunderstandings. But he added that he believed the future belonged to such social networking media and said government could function better by interacting more with the people.
Earlier, he presided over the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Saraswathi Kendra Learning Centre of the Foundation.
Book released
Cricketer and Kendra alumnus Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan released Mr. Tharoor's book “Shadows Across the Playing Field” on India-Pakistan cricketing ties.
