Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assured his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Tuesday that Islamabad would not hesitate to take “prompt and decisive action” if the involvement of Pakistan-based elements in the attack on an Indian airbase was proved beyond doubt.
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On Tuesday, Modi urged Sharif to take action against organisations and individuals linked to the Pathankot attack following leads provided by New Delhi. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked an air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution.
On 26 December, on his way back to India from a visit to Kabul, Prime Minister Modi made an unscheduled two-hour stop in Lahore to have tea with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. “Two, in the Mumbai attack we all know how NSG reached late and there was criticism of it. Here, NSG reached before the event”. Sharif’s office said he “conveyed his sadness and grief”.
“Through timely and prompt action by all agencies, the likely plan of the terrorists to destroy valuable assets of the Air Force has been foiled”, the Indian Defense Ministry had said in a statement at the time.
Sharif, who telephoned Modi from Sri Lanka, gave the assurance after New Delhi provided “specific and actionable information” to Islamabad regarding the terrorists.
Post-Pathankot, India and Pakistan seem inclined to stand together against terrorism.
Many experts said officials should have expected such an attack, because in recent years, violence has almost always followed signs of warming ties between India and Pakistan. It has been particularly scathing of Prime Minister Modi, given that the attack occurred about a week after his surprise visit to Pakistan. In an effort to break the deadlock, Modi met Sharif in the Pakistani city of Lahore last month and agreed to accelerate peace talks, starting with a meeting between foreign secretaries this month. Urdu, widely spoken in Pakistan, can be mostly understood by Hindi speakers.
Mr Parrikar said the troops took more than three days to “neutralise the militants” because the air base was huge. The Pathankot attack, which marks an unusual strike on a military installation outside Indian-held Kashmir, could have altered all this. Mr Sharif acknowledged the “maturity” shown by India in its statements after the attack.
The United Jehad Council, an alliance of 13 Kashmir-based rebel groups, claimed its “highway squad” stormed the base. Reports from “intelligence sources” have gone from claiming that the Jaish-e-Muhammad was involved in the attack to claiming that the chain of command went all the way up Pakistani military and intelligence.
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“He said the ISI is under the generals” command and is composed of army officers, so the spies are controlled by the Pakistani army, which justifies its large budget and nuclear weapons program by citing the Indian menace.
