Pakistan Vows to Retaliate If Attacked by India

Date: 19 February 2019 - 21:49

News ID: ۶۳۳۲۵

ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) -- Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday Pakistan would retaliate if India attacked in response to a bombing in the disputed Kashmir region, which India blamed on Pakistan.
Khan added that he wanted to cooperate in investigating the suicide bombing on Thursday, in which 40 Indian paramilitary police were killed in an attack claimed by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militant group.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors have risen sharply over the killing in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Pakistani authorities have denied any involvement in the attack and called for United Nations intervention.
But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, facing a general election by May, has come under pressure to exact revenge, and has said he has given his security forces a free hand to administer a "strong response”.
The South Asian neighbors have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
While they have not waged full-scale war since they both tested nuclear weapons in 1998, they have engaged in countless skirmishes along their de facto boundary in the mountains of Kashmir.
Khan reiterated that Pakistan had nothing to do with the bomb attack and said it was ready to take action against anyone found to be behind it. "If you have any actionable intelligence that Pakistanis are involved, give that to us, I guarantee you that we will take action,” Khan said.
India’s Foreign Ministry spurned the offer, saying Islamabad had failed to act on proof given to it about previous attacks.
It said there had been no progress in the Pakistani investigation into the 2008 attacks in Mumbai blamed on another Pakistani Islamist militant group.
"Promises of ‘guaranteed action’ ring hollow given the track record of Pakistan,” the ministry said in a statement.
India has for years accused Islamabad of supporting insurgents waging a nearly 30-year revolt in its only Muslim-majority state.
Muslim Pakistan has long said it only provides moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination, though that has never dispelled India’s conviction of Pakistani support for militants.
Khan said his country had changed. "I am telling you clearly that this is new Pakistan. This is a new mind set, this is new thinking,” he said.