Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has claimed that India was planning a surgical strike on its neighbouring country to divert attention from issues it had been facing at home.
In a press conference in Abu Dhabi on Friday, Qureshi said Islamabad had “credible information” that New Delhi was planning such a move. Qureshi told the media that New Delhi was trying to seek “tacit approval” for the strike from its “partners”. He didn’t share any details.
In the press meet, which was held at the end of Qureshi’s two-day visit to the UAE, the Pakistan foreign minister said that he has shared his country’s concerns on this front with the UAE leadership.
“An important development has cropped up… I’ve learned through our intelligence forces… that India is planning a surgical strike against Pakistan,” said Qureshi. He then claimed that India was already “trying to seek tacit approval” from what he called “important players who they consider to be their partners”.
The Pakistan foreign minister claimed that India was facing an internal crisis because of what he called failed policies of the government.
Qureshi criticised the Indian government’s handling of multiple issues, pointing to the situation in Kashmir, the farmers’ protest, the coronavirus pandemic, and the state of religious minorities in India. He also claimed that Pakistan has revealed that India was “sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan” in a dossier that it shared with the international community.
The Pakistan foreign minister mentioned a recent report by EU DisinfoLab that claimed to have exposed a concerted Indian disinformation network of “fake websites and fake NGOs that they had launched with a sole objective to malign Pakistan”.
Pakistan was “fully prepared to respond to and defeat India’s designs”, he said.
The Pakistan foreign minister said the information of an imminent strike against Pakistan had been shared with relevant governments, who had briefed about India’s plans and Pakistan’s readiness to respond to them.
Source: Hindustan Times
