MEA: Pak’s action remark ‘hysterical’

New Delhi, April 7

India today said it reserved the right of swift reprisal in case Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qure-shi’s “irresponsible” statement caused it to suffer another cross-border attack. 

It described Qureshi’s statement about another imminent attack on Pakistan by this month-end as a “public gimmick that appears to be a call to terrorists based on its soil to undertake a cross-border terror attack”.

The Ministry of External Affairs saw the “`hysterical statements” as an attempt to obfuscate the core issue of cross-border terrorism and advised Pakistan to use the established diplomatic and DGMO channels to share any actionable and credible intelligence it had on imminent terror attacks. 

The MEA statement came after Qureshi said Pakistan had “reliable intelligence” that India is planning to attack  again between April 16 and 20.

In an attempt to internationalise the bilateral dispute, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Tehmima Janjua held an emergency briefing of P-5 envoys (US, the UK, France, Russia and China) on Friday, asking the international community to “take notice of this irresponsible behaviour and restrain India from embarking on this path”. 

India has upped the ante after major attacks on security forces in Uri and Pulwama, with counter-reprisals by its conventional forces. — TNS