“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called upon the global community to immediately help arrange medical treatment for the victims” in Kashmir, especially for treatment of eye injuries resulting from use of pellet guns by the Indian forces, a Pakistan Foreign Office statement said. “I only hope and wish that the “soon” would actually be soon”, Singh said, informing Parliament about his speech in Islamabad.
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“Since I was giving speech, I did not see if it was live telecast or not”.
The Minister said as per the original plan, he had to reach the hotel by road from Rawalpindi airbase, but probably security officials later made a decision to use helicopter. I did not register any protest there. “Never has an Indian home minister been embarrassed in such a manner”, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.
“The magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in IHK has compelled us to immediately pool our material and human resources for treating the victims”, said the prime minister. Rajnath said all Indian PMs, regardless of party affiliations, have done their best to improve relations with neighbours, but Pakistan’s response has not been positive. Miffed over the treatment that he received in Islamabad, Rajanath said India has always tried to be friendly with its reluctant western neighbour, but, “Yeh padosi hai ki maanta nahin”. “May God give sense to all”, he said evoking laughter in the House. On the home minister’s return, the government leadership was fully appraised of what transpired in Pakistan, senior officials said.
Third, and as the ministry of external affairs told the media on Friday, India had already taken a dim view of the Pakistani government denying visas to all Indian media personnel bar those from the official media.
Khan brought up Kashmir in his speech and criticized what he said was the use of “excessive force” to suppress protests in Jammu and Kashmir.
He wanted to know if he suggested to Pakistanis to take care of problems in their own backyard. Despite this, India had no choice but to stress all this again at a meeting of key South Asian ministers under whose direct ambit comes the hard task of tackling terrorism in the region. “This is the standing order”.
India wants issues such as terrorism to be discussed, but Pakistan is stuck on Kashmir. “We had no business to put ourselves in such positions where we can be embarrassed”, he said, wondering why were no guarantees sought by the Indian government before the Home Minister visited Pakistan.
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At the meeting, Singh said the initiatives announced by India included offering technical assistance to make STOMD and SDOMD more effective.
