By Muhammad Luqman
“Pakistan will pay [back] India in its own coin in case of any misadventure,” Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan warned on Tuesday, responding to his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman’s comments.
Following a militant attack over the weekend on an Indian army camp in Sunjuwan in Jammu — which left 10 people dead, including five Indian soldiers and a civilian — the Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman directly blamed Pakistan for the attack, saying: “Pakistan will have to pay for Saturday’s militant attack
Khan, in a statement issued on Tuesday, said: “Instead of the knee-jerk reaction of blaming Pakistan without substantiation, India must answer for state-sponsored espionage against Pakistan.”
“Living evidence in person of Kulbhushan Jadhav is in front of the world,” he added.
He said that Pakistan’s armed forces are fully prepared to defend the country and “any Indian aggression, strategic miscalculation, or misadventure regardless of its scale, mode, or location will not go unpunished and shall be met with an equal and proportionate response.”
“India has failed to deliver justice to the 42 Pakistanis murdered in the Samjhota Express terrorism eleven years ago,” Khan said, adding that India is destabilising regional and world peace “through irresponsible statements on nuclear deterrence” and escalation of attacks on the Line of Control.
“An aggressive Pakistan-centric doctrine and arrayed forces under a belligerent regime leading to possible strategic miscalculation by India will seriously impact the strategic stability in South Asia,” he warned.
Sitharaman’s comments came a day after Islamabad had urged New Delhi not to whip up war hysteria.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry had strongly rejected similar allegations voiced by the Indian media.
“A particular section in the Indian media runs with their innuendos to malign Pakistan and whips up public frenzy. We are confident that the world community would take due cognisance of India’s smear campaign against Pakistan, and the deliberate creation of war hysteria,” the foreign ministry statement had said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, has said that Pakistani territory is not allowed to be used against any other country and Pakistan expects the same in reciprocity.
The army chief made these remarks while attending Chiefs of Defence (CHOD) Conference held at Kabul today (Tuesday).
According to ISPR, the media wing of Pakistan Army, Commander USCENTCOM, Commander Resolute Support Mission (RSM) and Army Chiefs of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also attended the meet.
The conference concluded to continue cooperation for peace and stability in the region.
Speaking at the occasion, COAS reiterated that path to regional peace and stability passes through Afghanistan.
The army chief said that regions develop as a whole, not individual countries.
He said that Pakistan has eliminated all terrorist sanctuaries from its soil, however, residual signatures of terrorists who take advantage of presence of 2.7 million Afghan refugees and absence of effective border security coordination, are also being traced and targeted through ongoing operation Radd ul Fasaad.
He also assured that Pakistani territory is not allowed to be used against any other country and Pakistan expects the same in reciprocity.
He said that collaborative approach and persistence is the answer to all challenges, for which Pakistan is ready to play its part.
