First day of UN counter-terror panel to be held in Mumbai's Taj Palace
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New Delhi: The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Meeting will be held in India on October 28 for its inaugural day of discussions at Mumbai's famed Taj Palace Hotel, which was one of the targets of the horrifying 26/11 terrorist attacks nearly 14 years ago.
According to authorities, the top UN panel's meeting on October 29 will take place in Delhi.
It is believed that the Taj Palace Hotel was chosen as the location for the first day's event as a way to demonstrate India's steadfast commitment to combating terrorism.
On November 26, 2008, a group of 10 Pakistani terrorists went on a rampage, carrying out a coordinated attack on a railway station, two luxury hotels (Taj Palace and Oberoi-Trident hotel) and a Jewish centre after they sneaked into India's financial capital, using the sea route in the Arabian sea from Karachi.
Over 160 people were killed in the nearly 60-hour assault that sent shockwaves across the country and even brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
"The special meeting of the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee on 'Countering the Use of New and Emerging Technologies for Terrorist Purposes' will begin with a soft opening and associated events in Mumbai on October 28 and continue with a full day's meeting in New Delhi on October 29," the panel said in a statement.
India is the Chair of the committee for the year 2022 and will host diplomats of the 15-nation UN body along with other member states for the special meeting in Mumbai and New Delhi.
The very fact that the Special Committee is also meeting in Mumbai itself will be a tribute and a statement to the horrific incident, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ruchira Kamboj, said last week.
She said the members of the committee will place a wreath at the site of the attacks.
India's two-year tenure as an elected non-permanent member of the 15-nation UN Security Council will end in December.
The meeting in Delhi is expected to specifically focus on the increasing threat of terrorism ad ways to effectively deal with it.
The meetings in Mumbai and Delhi will be the seventh time that the committee members would gather outside the UN headquarters in New York.
The last special meeting of the panel that took place outside the UN headquarters was in Madrid in July 2015.
With PTI inputs
