Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday said Pakistan cannot afford to be blacklisted and that there is no room for “jihadi outfits and jihadi culture” in his country, Dawn reported. Khan said there was intense pressure on Islamabad to crack down on terror organisations operating from Pakistani soil after the Pulwama attack.

Khan said all political parties in Pakistan had agreed to the National Action Plan and that all militant groups have been banned. ‘These groups have existed since the days of the United States-led Afghan war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and have operated from here for decades,” Khan said. He was speaking to reporters in Islamabad.

The Pakistani Prime Minister said Pakistan would like the world to believe that it is a peace-loving country that is sincere in removing terrorism from its soil through short-term and long-term policies. “On one hand, India is wrongly blaming Pakistan for the Pulwama attack just because Jaish accepted responsibility, and on the other, even Iran is complaining that militant groups have been using our soil to carry out attacks,” he said, while adding that no country could allow private militia to operate at will.

Ties between the two countries have been strained since a suicide bomber killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama on February 14. Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the attack.

On February 26, India claimed to have carried out air strikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammad camp in Pakistan’s Balakot. A day after the cross-border strike, India and Pakistan engaged in aerial skirmishes.

On the Financial Action Task Force’s monitoring of its activities, Khan said, “we have to satisfy the Financial Action Task Force of our compliance mechanism”.