Islamabad terms India's accusations of 'justifying terror' factitious

The Foreign Office rejects Indian External Affairs Minister (EAM) Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's comments accusing Pakistan of justifying terror as a policy and for the frail relations between the two countries.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said Pakistan "completely rejects these unwarranted and tendentious comments" and advised to reflect on its own egregious behaviour marked by illegal and unilateral actions in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) instead of blaming its neighbours for the current state of bilateral relations.

The FO's statement comes in reply to Indian Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's remarks during a recent online think-tank event. He had said that the Pakistani government justified using terrorism as a policy, making it very hard to conduct relations, according to a report by Indian news outlet The Print.

"We don't have a normal visa relationship, they are very restrictive on that score. They have blocked connectivity between India and Afghanistan and from Afghanistan to India. Normal neighbours do visas and trade, they give you connectivity and most important they don't practice terrorism. And I think until we address that problem, this challenge of how do you have a normal relationship with this very unique neighbour is a very troubling issue for our foreign policy," the report quoted Jaishankar as saying. The FO called out India for its "fabrications and baseless allegations against Pakistan", adding that "Clearly, an acknowledged perpetrator of state-terrorism cannot masquerade as a ' victim' of terrorism."

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