Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned neighbouring India on Wednesday to refrain from launching any attacks on his country, saying that Islamabad will respond with full force if New Delhi embarks on ‘any misadventure’.
Shah Mahmood Qureshi claimed that India is plotting an attack on Pakistan, allegedly to divert attention from a recent deadly clash between India and China in a disputed area of the Himalayas that killed at least 20 Indian soldiers. Chinese and Indian military commanders agreed on Monday to disengage their forces in the disputed area.
Qureshi alleged that India, after being beaten and embarrassed by China in the Himalayan incident, is trying to find an excuse for an operation against Pakistan. “There is no doubt about what India is trying to do,” he said. “Whatever India does, it will receive a response in kind.”
A day earlier, in a sign of escalating tensions between Pakistan and India, New Delhi had asked Islamabad to cut the size of its diplomatic staff in India by half within seven days after accusing its High Commission (HC) staff of engaging in espionage. “If 50 per cent of our embassy staff comes back, then the Indian embassy staff will also go back,” Qureshi said, adding that the move is a violation of the Vienna Convention.
Pakistani and Indian forces have been on maximum alert since last year, when Pakistan shot down two Indian warplanes in the disputed region of Kashmir and captured a pilot in response to an airstrike by Indian aircraft targeting areas inside Pakistan. Since gaining independence from British rule in 1947, the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two wars over Kashmir, which has been illegally occupied by India.
