India slams Pak’s ‘nuclear threat’

 

 

 

NUCLEAR sabre-rattling is Pakistan’s “stock-in-trade”, New Delhi said on Monday, in a strong response to Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir’s nuclear threat directed at India from the US soil. India said Munir’s remarks reinforced the well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in Pakistan where the military is “hand-in-glove” with terrorist groups. In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said India has already made it clear that it will not give in to nuclear blackmail and that it will continue to take all steps necessary to safeguard national security. It is also regrettable that these remarks should have been made from the soil of a friendly third country, the MEA said in an apparent message to the US. In an address to Pakistani diaspora in Florida’s Tampa, Munir reportedly made the nuclear threat in case his country faced an existential threat in a future war with India.

 

The Pakistani Army chief also warned that Islamabad would destroy Indian infrastructure, if they hit water flow to Pakistan. “We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us,” media reports quoted him as saying. The Pakistan Army chief’s comments are part of a pattern in Pakistan as whenever the US supports the Pakistan military, they always show their true colours of aggression, Government sources said. It is a symptom that democracy does not exist in Pakistan and it is their military which controls the country, they said. “Emboldened by reception and welcome by the US, the next step could possibly be a silent or open coup in Pakistan so that the Field Marshal becomes the President,” said a source. Munir is currently on a visit to the US, his second in two months. His comments are reflective of Pakistan’s record of nuclear sabre rattling from time to time while trying to pass itself off as a responsible nuclear actor, the sources said.

 

The remarks also demonstrated that the real nuclear instability in South Asia comes from a military that has its hand on the nuclear button rather than a civilian authority, they added. “Will the US hold Pakistan accountable for such irresponsible and provocative comments from its soil, as President Donald Trump has time and again spoken about containing nuclear conflict?” asked the source cited above. In his address, Munir also repeated his earlier remarks that Kashmir is the “jugular vein” of Pakistan. “How can anything foreign be in a jugular vein? This is a union territory of India. Its only relationship with Pakistan is the vacation of illegally occupied territories by that country,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said. Weeks before the Pahalgam attack, the Army chief said Pakistan will not forget the issue of Kashmir, asserting, “It was our jugular vein.”

 

His comments were trashed by India. “Before the Pahalgam attack, Munir had given a statement that Hindus and Muslims cannot stay together. This was followed by the Pahalgam terror attack in which people were asked for their religion and killed at point blank range,” said the source. “This statement is a signal that more terrorist attacks would be undertaken and cover would be the Pakistan missile and nuclear capabilities,” it added. Munir said his second visit to the US after a gap of one and a half months marks a new dimension in Pakistan-US relations. He also said that Pakistan is extremely grateful to Trump, whose strategic leadership has stopped the war between India and Pakistan as well as prevented many other wars around the world. New Delhi has been maintaining that India and Pakistan halted their military actions following direct talks between their militaries without any mediation by the US. Pak urges India to resume normal functioning of Indus Waters Treaty: Pakistan on Monday said it is committed to the full implementation of the Indus Water Treaty and urged India to immediately resume the normal functioning of the agreement, which New Delhi has held in abeyance since May.

 

A day after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22, India took a series of punitive measures against Pakistan that included putting the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 in “abeyance”. In a statement on Monday, the Foreign Office said that Pakistan is committed to the full implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty and also expects India to immediately resume the normal functioning of the treaty. It welcomed the interpretation related to the Indus Water Treaty made by the Court of Arbitration on August 8. India has never recognised the proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration after Pakistan raised objections to certain design elements of the two projects under the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty. The Foreign Office said that the Award interprets the designed criteria for the new run-of-river hydropower projects, to be constructed by India on the Western Rivers (Chenab, Jhelum, and Indus).