MPs team led by Tharoor set to start "peace mission" with anti-terrorism message

New York, May 25 (IANS) An all-party team of Members of Parliament is set to start a "peace mission” in the Americas that its leader Shashi Tharoor said will proclaim "the message that we will not be silenced by terrorism".

The eight MPs and Taranjit Singh Sandhu, the former Indian Ambassador to the US, were to start their mission in New York on Saturday evening with a visit to the 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Centre to honour the victims of the worst terror attack on the US.

They will also meet there with members of the diaspora and the media.

The team will go from here to Guyana, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil, before returning to the US for meetings with leaders, lawmakers and opinion-makers.

Before the team left India, Tharoor said, "The reason we are going is to speak for the nation, to speak about this horrendous crisis we were subjected to, in which our country was attacked by terrorists in the cruelest possible way."

"We need to speak up with clarity and conviction for our country, for our response, and to give the world the message that we will not be silenced by terrorism," he added.

In a display of the nation uniting against terrorism, the team is headed by Tharoor from the opposition Congress Party and includes Shambhavi of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Sarfaraz Ahmad of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and Milind Murli Deora of the Shiv Sena.

The other members are Shashank Mani Tripathi, Bhubaneswar Kalita, and Tejasvi Surya of the BJP, and GM Harish Balayogi of the Telugu Desam Party, a National Democratic Alliance partner.

After terrorists from The Resistance Front, an affiliate of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, massacred 26 civilians in Pahalgam following which India struck terrorist centres in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Pakistan attacked India, targeting civilian structures like places of worship, including gurudwaras, temples, and convents, and medical facilities in India, leading to an escalation of the conflict.

Starting the team's tour at the World Trade Centre memorial emphasises the message of Tharoor "that we don't want the world to look away either. We don't want indifference to try and forward the truth".

In the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, that had links to Pakistan, 2,731 people were killed.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda which carried out the attack, was given asylum and government protection by the Pakistan government and was killed in Abottabad by US Navy's Elite Seals unit.

"It's a mission that will one day remind the world that India stands for all the values we need to preserve in the world today, of peace, of democracy, freedom, and not of hatred, of killing and on terror," Tharoor said.

--IANS

al/khz