New Delhi: Asserting that ideological, political or religious justification for terrorism must be firmly rebuffed, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha on February 10 rejected Pakistan's arguments seeking to classify the scourge according to its "root causes".

"Perpetrators of terrorism, groups that support them and states that sponsor them are forces on the wrong side of history," he said while addressing the International Youth Conference on Terrorism.

"The sooner they recognize this fact and mend their ways, the better it would be for themselves and for the whole world," he stressed.

Observing that the issue of terrorism was critical, complex and one of the "most difficult challenges" of the 21st Century, he said, "We should reject self-serving arguments seeking to classify terrorism according to its root cases and therefore justifying terrorist action somewhere while condemning it elsewhere."

The linkage of terrorists with trans-national criminal syndicates, narcotics, arms smuggling and money laundering gave them added reach and lethality, he said.

Sinha said the reason for terrorism was not because there were unresolved root causes but because it had become an instrument of war by other means. "It has become an instrument of revenge".

Sinha said what some countries and groups were unable to obtain through peaceful and democratic means was sought to be grabbed through systematic, deliberate and "conscious use of terror as instrument of policy".

This was the reason why the term 'proxy war' was most appropriate to describe the policy of cross-border terrorism being sponsored by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir, he said.

Those who talk of root causes argued that ends could sometimes justify means including violence and terror.

India has always had a different approach to this question, he said while citing the example of the great war of Kalinga in which Ashoka discovered his folly in having believed that any means could be used to attain a particular end.

Mahatma Gandhi and the large majority of the leaders of the independence movement were equally clear that there could never be any justification for the use of violence, he said.

He recalled the Chauri Chaura incident when Gandhiji called off the nation-wide non-cooperation movement because of one incident of an attack on a police station by the people.

Emphasising that there cannot be any ambivalence on the question of use of violence and terror in the pursuit of political goals, he said no 'root cause' could justify the attack on Indian Parliament which was designed to eliminate at one go the entire national leadership of India.

Sinha emphasised that there was a need to address issues such as poverty, territorial disputes, religious extremism independently and on their own merits.

"But to link it to the fight against terrorism would undermining both the campaign against terrorism as well as the issues concerned," he said.

The minister said till the September 11 2001, terror attack on the US, the attitude of the large majority of the international community was that the scourge was someone else's problem.

After that day, there was recognition that terrorism was a problem, which could no longer be ignored.

PTI