Syed Akbaruddin said India’s UN vote was unrelated to the purported Pegasus deal.
New Delhi:
There is no link between the purported $2 billion India-Israel deal involving Pegasus spyware and the Indian vote at the United Nations as suggested by The New York Times , India’s former special envoy to the United Nations Syed Akbaruddin told NDTV on Saturday.
Calling the vote a “low-level matter”, Mr Akbaruddin said no one from New Delhi, Israel or Palestine had been in contact with the Indian mission in New York at the time of 2019 and hinted that it was a pro-government person. snooping tool. is a “fatal” error. However, he did not comment on the crux of the story, saying that India bought the Pegasus spyware from the Israeli security company NSO.
“Our relationship (India and Israel) has improved. There is no doubt about it. Everyone at the UN can see this. I wrote in my book that Israel has endorsed an Indian judge to the ICJ (International Court of Justice) This was in 2017. It is open knowledge that our relationship is warming up. When interests coincide, surely sure the states will work together I don’t think there’s anything to hide about that… I don’t think it’s the link I have to tell The New York Times on this it’s wrong and seriously wrong. important,” he said.
“It was a rather mundane case of a Palestinian NGO … and people didn’t have a problem with it at first. At that point, a number of countries came up and said they had found it. saw some links that the NGO did not specify in Mr. Akbaruddin said.
“So we had to take a call and we ourselves had a lot of concerns about NGOs being infiltrated by terrorists. In fact, India has actually proposed a resolution. When this case arose, my colleague who was in charge of this committee came up to me and said, ‘Ambassador, what do we do?’ And without blinking, I said, “Well, this is a terrorist concern. All they’re asking is to delay this meeting, so why do we have a problem?” I’ve never consulted anyone and given direction because these are in line with policy. No one has contacted me from Delhi about this or later. The Palestinians have not contacted me either because this is an NGO… I was a bit surprised that The New York Times chose one. different votes on a small NGO and linking it to a larger story. I have no idea about the larger story. I am the permanent representative in New York,” he said.
The former Indian envoy said that even after that 2019 vote, India continued to handle Israel-Palestinian issues as it did, from 1970 onwards.
“This is not a two-nation theory, it’s about an NGO. The Palestinians never asked us for support. Neither did the Israelis. And a year ago we abstained. about a similar thing.
The New York era has done poorly in this regard. I don’t know any other aspect because I’m not involved,” said Mr Akbaruddin.
His reaction followed a report by the New York Times claims India bought Pegasus spyware as part of a $2 billion defense deal with Israel in 2017 and, in the same breath, referred to a 2019 vote at the UN: “India: India voted in favor of Israel at the United Nations Economic and Social Council to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organization, a national first.”
Report caused a great controversy on Saturday with the opposition alleging that the government engaged in illegal snooping up to the level of “treason”. They indicated that they would raise the issue forcefully during the Parliamentary Budget Session starting Monday, even as union minister VK Singh denied the allegations, called The New York Times.”Superi Media”.
The government did not give an official response, but sources told PTI news agency that the matter regarding the Pegasus software is being overseen by a Supreme Court committee – led by a retired Supreme Court judge. retired RV Raveendran comes out on top – and its report has been awaited.
