Islamabad, Nov 24: Pakistan on Thursday stepped up its anti–India
rant with the military chiefs, including outgoing Army chief General
Raheel Sharif, threatening that the armed forces were capable of
teaching India “a lesson” if the border tension escalates. Just days
ahead of his retirement, General Sharif said that India had staged a
“drama” of surgical strikes. “If India conducts a surgical strike we
will give such a lesson that will be taught in India Army courses,”
according to an ISPR statement.
The comments from the army chief, who is on his farewell tour, came a
day after Pakistan claimed that 13 people, including three soldiers,
were killed in Indian firing along the Line of Control.
Prime Minister waz Sharif also convened a high–level meeting to
review the situation at the Line of Control, as Pakistan’s Air Chief of
Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman and val Chief Admiral Zakaullah
joined in hitting out at India.
Pakistan has shown utmost restraint in the face of Indian
belligerence and will not tolerate India’s “deliberate targeting” of
civilians and ambulances, waz Sharif was quoted as saying in a
statement from the Prime Ministers House.
“We cannot tolerate deliberate targeting of innocent civilians,
particularly children and women, the ambulances and the civilian
transport,” waz Sharif said.
“Pakistan has exercised maximum restraint despite the continuing
ceasefire violations from the Indian side,” the Prime Minister said. The
Prime Minister called upon the intertiol community to play its
active role in defusing tension between the two tions, “which has been
deliberately escalated by the Indian side”, said the statement.
The meeting concluded that India was trying to divert the attention
of the intertiol community “from the grave human rights violations,
massacres and atrocities being committed by the Indian security forces”
in Kashmir, it said.
In a related development, Pakistan’s Air Chief of Staff, Air Chief
Marshal Sohail Aman said the country’s armed forces were “not worried
about India at all”.
Speaking at the Intertiol Defence Exhibition and Semir (IDEAS)
in Karachi, the chief of air staff also called on India to resolve the
Kashmir issue, saying: “They should speak on matters of principle and
our ties will improve.”
Meanwhile, val Chief Admiral Zakaullah also joined the other two
military chiefs and said that the response that Pakistan vy gave to
India (when it chased an Indian Submarine last week) has satisfied the
public. “I am also satisfied.”
Firing exchanges and a bitter diplomatic war between the two
neighbours have escalated after the September 18 killing of 19 Indian
soldiers in a terror attack on an army base in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir.
(IANS)