Islamabad, Feb 24: Pakistan wants peace, but India is creating a “war frenzy”, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi claimed on Sunday, amidst simmering tensions between the two countries following the Pulwama attack that killed 49 CRPF soldiers.
Addressing the media following a consultative meeting in the wake of the Pulwama attack, Qureshi also said that Pakistan was trying to defuse tensions and has written to the UN, seeking the world body’s intervention.
Forty-nine Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed on February 14 in Jammu and Kashmir when a suicide bomber of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militant group rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into their bus in Pulwama district, sparking outrage in the country.
Days after the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “security forces were given a free hand to avenge the dastardly act.”
“Pakistan wants peace and I want to give clear message that India is creating war frenzy but if it thinks that it can bring Pakistan under pressure or browbeat us, then it should get rid of this notion because this nation is united like a fist,” Qureshi said.
“Don’t even think of looking at Pakistan with an evil eye,” he warned India as he asked New Delhi to “change its attitude towards” Islamabad.
Stating that India has issued a circular to cancel leaves of nurses, doctors and paramedics in Jammu and Kashmir, he asked, “What impression it wants to give?
Qureshi also recalled that former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti has said that “you can press the people but not their ideas”.
He asked the Indian politicians to counsel the BJP-led government in New Delhi to follow restraint.
Qureshi, who met former foreign secretaries and envoys on Sunday, said the consultations were held to get their input to tackle emerging developments in the wake of the Pulwama attack.
India launched a major diplomatic offensive against Islamabad after the Pulwama attack and highlighted Pakistan’s role in “using terrorism as an instrument of state policy”.
