The crowning glory of Sushmaji’s stint at Ministry of External Affairs was when she represented India at a meeting of foreign ministers of the member-nations of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Abu Dhabi on March 1 this year. For the first time in the 50-year-old history of OIC, India’s external affairs minister was invited to participate as a guest of honour. Since she had gone there in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack and the subsequent military skirmish between India and Pakistan, her participation evoked a lot of interest both in our own country and in the OIC fraternity.
Her speech in Abu Dhabi is one of the finest in her political career. Without mentioning our neighbour, she said, “If we want to save the humanity then we must tell the states that provide shelter and funding to the terrorists, to dismantle the infrastructure of the terrorist camps and stop providing funding and shelter to the terror organisations, based in that country.”