Pakistan, which has launched a crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawah, on Friday said the country faced the prospects of being declared a terrorist state and left with a crippled economy if it had not acted on the sanctions imposed on the terrorist group by the UN Security Council.
"There was a resolution in the United Nations Security Council. If Pakistan had not taken steps under that, then they could have declared Pakistan a terrorist state. They could have crippled Pakistan's economy," Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said.
"If the whole world is on one side, Pakistan does not have the strength to face the whole world. We can fight against our enemies, but we can't fight an economic war with the whole world," he told media persons at the Islamabad airport.
Pakistan has launched a crackdown on JuD, the front organisation of the banned LeT blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks, in response to the UN Security Council's declaration of the group as a terrorist outfit, he said.
Referring to the tension sparked by the Mumbai terror attacks and reports of a possible military confrontation between Pakistan and India, Mukhtar said war was 'not to the advantage of either' country.
Pakistan on Thursday banned the JuD and placed its chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, also the founder of the LeT, under house arrest for three month. Jamaat offices across the country were sealed on Thursday night by police and security agencies. There are also unconfirmed reports that dozens of Jamaat activists have been detained.
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