Trump-Munir lunch: Tharoor reminds US of Pakistan’s role in sheltering ‘Osama’

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday reminded the US of Pakistan’s role in sheltering Osama bin Laden, saying he hoped Washington used the meeting between Donald Trump and Pakistan’s Army General Asim Munir to tell Islamabad not to support terrorism.

The Congress MP made the remark in response to a question from reporters here about Trump’s lunch meeting with General Munir.

Tharoor said he hoped that during the interaction, the US had reminded Pakistan of the importance of not supporting terrorism or providing safe havens to terrorists, and of not enabling, guiding, training, arming, financing, equipping or sending terrorists into India.

He said this message was conveyed to the Pakistani delegation by some of the American Senators and Congressmen and hoped that everyone in the US government would do the same.

Tharoor, who recently led a delegation of Indian parliamentarians to the US and a few other countries to talk about India’s response to terrorism in the wake of the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, said the US could not have forgotten the episode of Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden so quickly.

“Osama Bin Laden killed over 2,000 people in the 9/11 attacks. He destroyed two iconic American buildings. So, in these circumstances, Pakistan’s culpability in hiding this man, until he was finally found in a safe house near an army camp in a cantonment city, is something that cannot be easily forgotten by the Americans,” the Congress leader said.