“At that time, we had warned him not to trust Pakistan”.
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Former defence minister AK Antony slammed the Modi government on Pathankot terror attack and said there was a serious lapse and there were enough hints but no action has been taken.
Stating that the Indian government’s Pakistan policy was clear and consistent, Swarup said India wanted friendly relations with all its neighbours, including Pakistan.
Sources said the intelligence agencies have identified the mastermind who was controlling Asfaq Ahmed, Hafiz Abdul Shakur, Kashim Jan and Masood Azhar, the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.
Security forces continued search and combing operation inside the Pathankot air base on Tuesday – the fourth day after the attack on the frontline Air Force Station (AFS) by suspected Pakistani terrorists.
Slamming the Prime Minister for making an unscheduled visit to Pakistan to meet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif, Shinde said, “He abruptly visited Pakistan”. Congress also termed the offensive as a terrorist attack on the country.
Modi made a surprise stopover in Pakistan last month, the first time an Indian premier has visited in over a decade.
A meeting between the foreign secretaries of both nations had been tentatively scheduled for January 15, but it is unclear if it will still happen after the weekend attack on the Indian Air Force base near the Pakistan border. “And what we want and what we continue to say we want and will continue to work for is increased cooperation, communication, coordination; increased information sharing and increased efforts against what we all believe is a shared challenge in the region”.
Alliance spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain issued a statement to Current News Service, based in the Indian portion of Kashmir, saying the attack carried a message for India that no security establishment was out of the militants’ reach.
“The government of Pakistan has spoken very powerfully on this and it’s our expectation that they’ll treat this exactly the way they’ve said they would”.
But analyst Khadim Hussain said the attack on the air base along with a Taliban surge in Afghanistan indicated that elements of the Pakistani military were not on board with the negotiations.
The Sena also said that had the Congress been in power today, there would have been demands to strike at Pakistan and avenge the deaths of soldiers, but now nothing is being done about the incident.
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The United Jehad Council said that by accusing Pakistan of every attack, India neither succeeded in maligning the Kashmir freedom struggle nor would it gain anything in the future.
