Pakistan’s foreign minister on Saturday accused India of supporting “terrorism” aimed at destabilizing the country.
India has denied allegations by arch nemesis Pakistan that the Indian government had helped fund armed groups on Pakistani soil, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissing them as “manufactured” and “figments of the imagination.”
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Saturday accused India of sponsoring “terrorism” aimed at destabilizing the country and undermining its economic partnership with China. He said Islamabad would present its evidence to the United Nations and other international bodies.
“This desperate attempt will find few interested parties, as the international community is aware of Pakistan’s tactics,” said Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava in a statement.
He added that Pakistan itself finances the rebels, a charge that Islamabad also denies.
“We hope that the international community will force India to end its terrorism and bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Pakistan,” Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Twitter.
A statement from the Pakistani army said that India was “training, harboring and dropping … terrorists into Pakistan” from 87 training camps, 66 in Afghanistan and 21 in India.
Nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought three wars since they both gained independence from the British colonial power, have accused each other of equipping the rebels.
This desperate attempt will find few interested parties, as the international community is aware of Pakistan’s tactics.
But Saturday’s announcement by the Pakistani foreign minister and military at a press conference in the capital Islamabad provided a higher level of detail and specific allegations.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday that Islamabad had gathered “irrefutable” evidence of India’s involvement in “terrorist” activities affecting Pakistan. [File: Farooq Naeem/AFP]‘Irrefutable facts’
Pakistani officials said they had obtained documents showing that India had rounded up and financed members of the Pakistani Taliban, as well as armed groups from the southern province of Baluchistan who claimed responsibility for the attacks on Chinese interests as part of a effort to sabotage China’s $ 65 bn Belt and Road Investment Plan in Pakistan.
“We have irrefutable facts that we will present to the nation and the international community through this dossier,” said the Pakistani Foreign Minister.
Major General Babar Iftikhar, who heads the Public Relations and Media Office of the Pakistan Armed Forces, presented some of the evidence in the dossier purporting to show India’s involvement in the attacks inside Pakistan, including receipts banks showing funds and photos showing the alleged perpetrators of attacks within India. consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
We have irrefutable facts that we will present to the nation and the international community through this dossier.
It also played an audio clip purporting to record a conversation between an Indian intelligence official and Allah Nazar, who is the top leader of the Baloch separatist fighters in southwestern Pakistan.
The press conference came a day after at least 10 civilians and five security personnel were killed in a cross-border bombardment between the two rivals, on one of the deadliest days of this year.
India’s nationalist Hindu government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi stripped Kashmir of its limited autonomy last August. [File: Anupam Nath/AP Photo]
Pakistan’s military said that five civilians and one army soldier were killed by the shelling of Indian troops across the highly militarized border that separates the Pakistani and Indian sides of Kashmir.
Meanwhile, India has long alleged that Pakistan has founded, trained and financed secessionist groups operating in Indian-administered Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region claimed by both countries.
Last August, India’s Hindu nationalist government stripped Kashmir of limited autonomy and put the region under direct central government, a step that activists say took away the democratic rights of Kashmiris to elect local government.
Also on Sunday, Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry “vigorously rejected” Pakistani accusations that its territory was used for acts of “terror.”
The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan explicitly states that, as one of the main victims of terrorism, we are committed to a policy of fighting all forms of terrorism, without discrimination throughout the world, and we will never allow the Afghan territory to be use for destructive activities. against other countries, “he said in a statement.
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