Panaji: Charging the Western countries of adopting double standards at the just-concluded Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organisation (WTO) at Cancun, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Venkaiah Naidu on September 18 said talks had failed due to United States and European Union's (EU) refusal to accede to the legitimate demands of the developing nations.

"The West continued to demand that developing countries make sacrifices for their benefit. Their (West) insistence was a prescription for disaster for the world's poor and developing nations," he told reporters.

The credit goes to Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley, who was in the vanguard of developing countries' successful united front against the West's "divide and rule" tactics at Cancun, Naidu said.

"The West's self-centred and short-sighted approach is also visible in its policy towards international terrorism. After the ghastly incidents of 9/11, it finally woke up to the danger of terrorism fuelled by religious extremism.

"It seems that the West has deliberately chosen to be half-awake about this threat. Events before, after, as well as those directly related to 9/11 have clearly shown that the epicentre of global terrorism lies in Pakistan," the BJP leader said.

The BJP leader alleged that the west has been dragging its feet on India's just demand that effective pressure be put on Pakistan to dismantle the infrastructure of cross-border terrorism and to stop infiltration completely.

"BJP has been consistently of the view that India has to fight and win the battle against cross-border terrorism essentially on our own. If the international community backs us in this just struggle, such support is most welcome," he added.

Naidu said the party's criticism of the West was against their "blatant double standards" on those two important issues facing the world community – the need for fair and non-discriminatory global trade regime and the need for a firm and consistent struggle against international terrorism.

PTI