NEW DELHI: Indian officials briefed the monitoring team of the UN Security Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee on the activities of The Resistance Front (TRF), the group behind the Pahalgam terror attack, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
An Indian technical team is visiting New York to interact with the monitoring team of the 1267 Sanctions Committee and other partner countries in the United Nations, the people said on condition of anonymity.
The team will also meet representatives of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), the people said. The team’s visit is part of efforts by India to get the TRF designated as a global terrorist group.
TRF, a front for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), initially claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 that killed 26 people, and Indian officials have said the group retracted the claim on the directions of its handlers across the border.
On May 7, India carried out military strikes on terror infrastructure in territories controlled by Pakistan under Operation Sindoor in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack. This triggered four days of intense strikes and counter-strikes by the two countries using drones, missiles and long-range weapons before they reached an understanding on halting military actions on May 10.
India provided information about the TRF’s role as a proxy for Pakistan-based terror groups in half-yearly reports to the monitoring team for the 1267 Sanctions Committee in May and November 2024. Before this, the monitoring team was informed by the Indian side in December 2023 about the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) operating in Jammu and Kashmir through groups such as the TRF.
“We are going to be meeting with the [monitoring] team again very soon and we will be providing an update to the information that we have provided earlier,” foreign secretary Vikram Misri told reporters last week.
The 1267 Sanctions Committee is tasked with managing and updating sanctions lists, and monitoring and supporting implementation of sanctions regimes under UN Security Council resolution 1267.
The main function of the monitoring team is to assist the 1267 Sanctions Committee with freezing financial assets of designated terrorist individuals and entities, preventing the entry into or transit through a member state’s territory by designated individuals, and preventing the supply of arms to designated individuals or entities.
The monitoring team is also a member of the Working Group on Tackling the Financing of Terrorism, and it works closely with the private financial sector and partners such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
