A year after Pakistan was put on the “grey list” by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), New Delhi is beginning to accept that Islamabad has taken some action against the terror organisations on the ground.
An official said Pakistani authorities had seized 771 seminaries — educational institutions run by the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its fronts, Jamaat-ud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniyat, and the Jaish-e-Mohammad.
“It is for the first time since early 1990s that Pakistan has begun to take action against India-focussed terror groups and freeze their assets,” a senior government official said.
Blacklist threat
To avoid being put on the blacklist, Pakistan has seized properties associated with terror groups in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as well, the official said.
A team of External Affairs and Home Ministry officials is now preparing to travel to Orlando, U.S. for the plenary session of the FATF, a global terrorism financing watchdog, from June 16 to 21. Indian has taken a back seat to the U.S., the U.K. and France in the past year since Pakistan was put on the “grey list”, though Pakistani officials have frequently accused India of “dictating” terms in the action-taken reviews. The Asia Pacific Group of the FATF held a meeting in May, and according to the Pakistani newspaper The News , the country was found to have taken inadequate action in 18 of 27 areas.
Pakistan was on the “grey list” of countries of risk between 2012 and 2015 as well.
French stance
On Monday, French Deputy Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Minister of State V. Muraleedharan here. Officials said the agenda included laying the groundwork for Mr. Modi’s visit to France’s Biarritz in August to attend the G-7 summit as a special invitee of President Emmanuel Macron.
Mr. Lemoyne said counter-terrorism remained at the top of the India-France agenda.
