Give peace a chance, imran tells modi
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has told Narendra Modi that his nation desires to see stability in the region and asked the Indian prime minister to give peace a chance. Imran assured Modi that he stands by his words that if India provides ‘actionable intelligence’ regarding the February 14 attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama, he will immediately act.
islamabad — Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday reiterated his earlier stance regarding the Pulwama incident that if India gave actionable intelligence Pakistan would immediately act.
On Saturday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked Prime Minister Khan to keep his word as a Pathan and fight poverty and illiteracy together with India instead of fighting each other during a public meeting in Tonk, Rajasthan.
Prime Minister Imran urged Modi to give peace a chance.
“PM (Prime Minister) Imran Khan stands by his words,” the PM Office Media Wing in a press release said.
“In my meeting with PM Modi in December 2015, we had agreed that since poverty alleviation is a priority for our region, we would not allow any terrorist incident to derail peace efforts, however long before Pulwama, these efforts were derailed in September 2018. Sadly, now peace remains elusive due to elections in
India,” the Press release quoted the prime minister as saying.
Meanwhile, country’s three former foreign secretaries have urged the Imran Khan government to be prepared to deter any “aggressive action” by India after the Pulwama incident while engaging in “robust diplomacy” to end the crisis peacefully.
In a joint article published in
newspaper on Sunday, former foreign secretaries — Riaz Hussain Khokhar, Riaz Mohammed Khan and Inamul Haq — urged the media, political leadership, intelligentsia
and public opinion makers in the two countries to show “responsibility to exercise restraint and take measures to bring some equanimity to the troubled environment”.
The article started with asserting that “Tension between Pakistan and India is dangerously high” as Indian Prime Minister Modi gave a free hand to Indian army to take retaliatory action for Pulwama.
India has threatened to “isolate” Pakistan and to strangulate its economy besides taking the symbolic step of withdrawing MFN status, they said. “This fraught situation can spark a conflict with incalculable consequences for both Pakistan and India. Can they pull back from the brink?” the former foreign secretaries wrote.
They wrote that “Pakistan faces the challenge to avert a catastrophe that Indian actions may precipitate in South Asia”.
“First and foremost, Pakistan must be ready to deter any possible aggressive action, without being provocative. Preparedness will itself pre-empt escalation,” they said.
Asking India for serious response to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s offer to investigate any actionable information, they said, “simultaneously, Pakistan is engaged in and must continue robust diplomacy at every level internationally, bilaterally and at the United Nations”.
In India, already questions are being raised about the wisdom of abandoning dialogue with Pakistan and with the Kashmiris, they said. —