India only responding to original escalation by Pak: Foreign secy
Vikram Misri said most countries have recognised the “barbaric nature” of the Pahalgam attack as well as the restrained, measured and non-escalatory nature of India’s response.
New Delhi Pakistan alone can decide whether there is a further escalation of tensions with India as New Delhi has only responded to the “original escalation” of the Pahalgam terror attack and will respond to further actions by Islamabad, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said on Thursday.
Addressing a briefing on Operation Sindoor hours after India acknowledged that its armed forces targeted air defence systems at several locations in Pakistan in response to Pakistani strikes on military targets at 15 sites in India, Misri said most countries have recognised the “barbaric nature” of the Pahalgam attack as well as the restrained, measured and non-escalatory nature of India’s response.
His comments came hours before a Pakistani attack on Jammu was thwarted, with Indian air defence systems bringing down several projectiles.
“First of all, it is Pakistan that escalated on April 22. We are only responding to that escalation and...if there is an attempt at further escalation by Pakistan, it will be responded to in an appropriate domain,” Misri told the briefing that was also attended by Col Sofiya Qureshi of the army and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh of the air force, both clad in combat fatigues to send a message that the Indian military was ready.
“And therefore, the choice is entirely that of Pakistan to make,” he said, making it clear that the Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 that killed 26 civilians was the “original escalation.”
Misri cautioned that if Pakistan sought to use its fabricated allegations about the targeting of the Neelam-Jhelum hydropower project in PoK as a “pretext for targeting Indian infrastructure of a similar nature”, Islamabad will be “entirely responsible for the consequences”.
This was the second briefing by Misri and the two women officers since India’s armed forces launched Operation Sindoor early on Wednesday, targeting terrorist infrastructure at nine sites in territories controlled by Pakistan. The Pakistan government said on Wednesday it reserved the right to respond to the strikes, which killed 26 people and injured 46 others. People present at a briefing of leaders of political parties by Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh reported that the minister said the strikes killed around 100 people.
Misri declined to go into details on operational matters related to India’s military actions but responded to questions about disinformation purportedly spread by the Pakistani officials -- that they had shot down Indian fighter jets -- by saying that the neighbouring country’s leadership had been lying since its creation in 1947.
“This is a country where the lies had begun when it was born. When the Pakistan Army attacked Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, they told lies to the UN that they had nothing to do with it, the people who went in were tribals,” Misri said in Hindi.
“When our army and UN officials reached there, they saw the Pakistan Army had infiltrated [the region]. Then, they had to acknowledge that their troops were there. This journey started 75 years ago, I’m not surprised that this kind of disinformation is being indulged in,” he said.
Misri noted that most of the countries that have been in touch with India over the Pahalgam attack and the subsequent tensions have supported the government by condemning the incident and acknowledging the country’s “right to respond to these attacks in self-defense and...to ensure that there is no further escalation”.
He said most countries have recognised the “barbaric [and] unprecedented nature” of the Pahalgam attack and the restrained, measured and non-escalatory nature of India’s response. “That is what is explaining the kinds of reactions we are seeing,” he said.
Misri responded to a question about India approaching the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to review its bailout package for Pakistan by saying the country’s executive director at the global financial body “will put forward India’s position” during a meeting of the board in Washington on Friday.
“The decisions of the board are a different matter...But I think the case with regard to Pakistan should be self-evident to those people who generously open their pockets to bail out this country,” he said, noting that many of the 24 bailout packages sanctioned by the IMF for Pakistan had not reached a successful conclusion.
Misri highlighted the Pakistani security establishment’s long-standing ties with terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and pointed to the presence of Pakistani military officials at what he said were funerals with “state honours” for terrorists killed in Wednesday’s strike. “Giving terrorists state funerals may be a practice in Pakistan. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to us,” he said.
Indian authorities will meet the UN’s 1267 Sanctions Monitoring Committee soon to provide updated information on The Resistance Front (TRF), a front for the LeT that claimed the Pahalgam attack, he said. He debunked Pakistan’s offer for a joint investigation into the Pahalgam attack by saying that Islamabad had always failed to follow through when similar steps were taken in the past with regard to the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2016 Pathankot attack.
Col Qureshi and Wing Commander Singh provided details at the briefing about the actions carried out by the armed forces targeting air defence systems in Pakistan but did not go into operational details.
