Full text of Manmohan Singh's speech at CMs meet

STRONG STATEMENT: Manmohan Singh spoke at CM’s Conference on Internal Security in New Delhi.

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New Delhi: The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, inaugurated the Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security in New Delhi today. Following is the text of the Prime Minister’s inaugural address on the occasion:

"We last met to discuss internal security issues in December 2007, a little over a year ago. The 12 months that have passed since then have been a difficult period for us. The security situation has, if anything, become even more complex. Many predictions made a year ago have unfortunately turned out to be true. In some cases the scale and magnitude of terrorist attacks appear to have been stepped up exponentially. In the prevailing circumstances we cannot afford to take a partial or segmented view. A holistic approach to our security concerns is definitely called for.

During the past year, we faced a severe challenge from terrorist groups operating from outside our country. Many of them act in association with hostile Intelligence Agencies in these countries. The attempt has been to exploit our vulnerabilities, and at times they do succeed as is evident from the terrorist attack in Mumbai. Our problems are compounded by the fact that we have a highly unpredictable and uncertain security environment in our immediate neighbourhood. The Governments in some of our neighbouring countries are very fragile in nature. The more fragile a Government, the more it tends to act in an irresponsible fashion. Pakistan’s responses to our various demarches on terrorist attacks is an obvious example.

We face multi-dimensional challenges of different kinds, but the most serious threats are those posed by Terrorism, Left Wing Extremism and insurgency in the North East. Left Wing Extremism is primarily indigenous and home-grown. Terrorism, on the other hand, is largely sponsored from outside our country, mainly Pakistan, which has utilized terrorism as an instrument of State policy. Insurgency in the North-East exploits disparities in income and wealth but it is also sustained by the sanctuaries provided to the leaders of insurgency movements in the neighbouring countries. There are, hence, fundamental differences in the way we need to view the internal security challenge and deal with the three threats that I had mentioned.

In the previous meeting it had been mentioned that terrorists were enlarging the canvas of threats. Increasingly, their concentration was on attacking economic, infrastructure, and iconic targets, apart from political, military and security ones. Mention had also been made of the fact that the sea route was now being exploited and explored as an alternative to land routes. It had, therefore, been suggested that there should be greater vigilance along our coast line and better monitoring of maritime activity in our territorial waters. The terrorists who carried out the attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008 used the sea route, and managed to evade our coastal surveillance.

Calculating and responding to security challenges of this nature is in itself a complex exercise at the best of times. It becomes even more challenging in the circumstances I have just now mentioned. Our security calculus is a matrix of many imponderable factors, but there are two fundamental and underlying aspects, i.e., protecting the territorial integrity of the country and ensuring our internal security.