Uri attack: Boycott of SAARC in Pak should be weighed, says Afghanistan

New Delhi: Time has come for countries of the region to join hands in "singling out" Pakistan for spoiling regional peace and stability through terror, and possible boycott of upcoming SAARC Summit in Islamabad should be weighed, Afghan envoy Shaida Mohammad Abdali said on Tuesday.

Calling for regional unity in sending out a strong message to Islamabad, he said terrorism being unleashed has become very lethal and systematic as it is state-sponsored and that there should be zero tolerance to it.

Asked whether India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh join hands to boycott the SAARC Summit in Islamabad in November, he said there must be a comprehensive effort by countries of the region and that most of them share views of India and Afghanistan.

"We have to make sure that we bring the maximum number of countries and I am sure most of the countries in South Asia are in line with what Afghanistan and India think. Therefore, the effort should be a comprehensive one and one which should include as many (countries) as possible," he told in an interview to a news channel.

The Afghan envoy said time has come to "single out" the country that spoils unity and regional stability and peace. "Definitely we should single a country that spoils our unity and spoils regional stability and peace and that stops integration and connectivity."

Earlier in the day, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and condemned the "cross border attack" in Uri and expressed solidarity with India to eliminate the threat of terrorism.

"There must be zero tolerance (towards terrorism). It must end. We have seen the signs of terrorism becoming much more lethal and becoming very systematic. This is a state-sponsored terrorism. It is no more a issue of non-state actors that we have been hearing for a long time.

"Now there is ample proof of this as state-sponsored terrorism and, therefore we have to revisit our mechanisms. We have a global war on terror that must be revisited," said Abdali.

Amidst the ongoing hostility, Pakistan has decided not to send its intelligence chief to India to attend a conference of top security experts of SAARC countries beginning Thursday.

Director General of Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan Aftab Sultan will not attend the SAARC meeting and that country will be represented by an official of the Pakistan High Commission, a Home Ministry official said.

The two-day conference of the High-Level Group of Eminent Experts from South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, to be held here, is being hosted by Director of Intelligence Bureau Dineshwar Sharma and intelligence chiefs of all other SAARC nations -- Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Maldives besides India -- will participate it.

According to a statement issued by the Home Ministry, the second meeting of the High-Level Group of Eminent Experts from SAARC countries will be held on September 22 and 23.        The aim of the meeting is to strengthen SAARC anti-terror mechanism, it said. The first such meeting was held in New Delhi in February 2012.

The agenda of the meeting includes functioning of SAARC Terrorist Offences Monitoring Desk (STOMD) and the SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (SDOMD), countering terrorism and strengthening anti-terrorism mechanisms in SAARC, intelligence sharing and police cooperation, human resource development and relationship building, combating corruption and cyber crimes, among others.