Global community should compel Pak to dismantle terror: India

NEW DELHI: India on Thursday asked the global community to "persuade and compel" Pakistan to destroy all terror camps on its territory by taking "serious note" of former President Pervez Musharraf's remarks on the country supporting these outfits.

Defence Minister A K Antony told reporters here on Thursday that it was "not (not) a secret" that Pakistan was fanning terror attacks on India and that it was "repeatedly reminded" to dismantle the 44 terror outfits operating from their territory.

"The international community should take a serious note of it and persuade and compel Pakistan to dismantle all terror outfits there. According to us, 44 terrorist outfits...all of them must be dismantled and destroyed," Antony said after coming out of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov here.

"That (compelling Pakistan) is our consistent request to everybody. We are repeatedly telling Pakistan and we are repeatedly reminding the international community also," he said responding to a question on what he thought of Musharraf's remarks in an interview to German magazine Der Spiegel recently.

Noting that Pakistan's support to terror outfits targeting India was known "very well," Antony said, "Repeatedly we are telling everybody this. We told in 2009 also. This is what we are telling everybody. The former President (Musharraf) in an interview admitted that they trained terrorists."

Asked about Afghanistan situation, the Defence Minister said he had discussed the South Asian neighbour with his Russian counterpart over the last two days and that both countries felt that "Afghanistan should not become a safe haven for terrorists."

He said both India and Russia were interested in peace and stability in Afghanistan.