UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has slapped sanctions,
including an assets freeze and travel ban, on the al Qaeda linked
Pakistani Taliban, which is believed to be behind a string of terror
attacks in that country and last year’s botched bombing attempt on New
York’s Times Square.
The powerful council on Friday put the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on its international anti-terrorism
sanctions list, a move highlighting the terrorist group’s growing
capacity to strike. The decision to target the Pakistani Taliban comes
at a time when the UN is seeking to encourage the Afghan Taliban to
pursue peace talks with the government there, a prelude to a US
withdrawal from the war-ravaged country. The UK welcomed the TTP’s
addition to the sanctions list. The move "sends a powerful signal of
the international community’s solidarity and resolve in the fight
against the TTP and international terrorism," said Mark Lyall Grant,
the UK’s envoy to the UN. "It (the group) has clear links to al Qaeda
at an operational level.
Designating TTP under the sanctions
regime will help to reduce its ability to operate effectively and
perpetrate terrorist attacks." The UN anti-terrorism blacklist imposes
financial and travel ban aimed at restraining the extremists’ capacity
to strike. According to the Obama administration, Faisal Shahzad, a
naturalised US citizen of Pakistani origin who planted the Times Square
car bomb, had acknowledged that he was trained in Waziristan, a
stronghold for al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban,
thought to be behind a number of terror attacks in Pakistan that killed
hundreds of people, was formally established in 2007 and is headed by
Hakimullah Mehsud. Meanwhile, the US has welcomed the inclusion of
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan to the UN sanctions list. According to a
state department statement issued from Washington, the UN Security
Council ban on the terrorists’ organization is a clear indication for
terrorists’ aides and supporters that the global body has zero
tolerance for such acts.
The state department spokes person
said that the ban would help the US cause of eliminating terrorism and
defeating Al Qaeda. Tehrik-E-Taliban Pakistan attacked US military base
in Afghanistan in 2009 and the US consulate in Peshawar in 2010.
Earlier, the UN announced that it had added the Pakistani Taliban to
its terrorism blacklist, subjecting it to an asset freeze and arms
embargo in a move supported by the United States, Britain and the
Pakistani government. The Security Council committee monitoring
sanctions against al-Qaida said it added Tehrik-E Taliban Pakistan,
better known as the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP, to its list of groups
subject to an asset freeze and arms embargo. Its top leaders,
Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali Ur Rehman, have been on the list since last
October and are subject to these sanctions as well as a travel ban. Online
