‘Terrorism should be treated as global issue’
BRUSSELS, June 10:
India would strike deep into Pakistan if provoked by terrorist attacks, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has warned, asserting that there will be retribution against the terrorist outfits and their leaders in case of barbaric acts like the Pahalgam attack.
Jaishankar, who is travelling to Europe a month after India launched Operation Sindoor in response to the Pahalgam terror attack, also said that Pakistan was training “thousands” of terrorists “in the open” and “unleashing” them on India.
“We are not going to live with it. So our message to them is that if you continue to do the kind of barbaric acts which they did in April, then there is going to be retribution, and that retribution will be against the terrorist organisations and the terrorist leadership,” he told Politico on Monday.
“We don’t care where they are. If they are deep in Pakistan, we will go deep into Pakistan,” he added.
Jaishankar warned that the root causes of the conflict remain unchanged.
“It (Pakistan) is a country very steeped in its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy. That is the whole issue,” he was quoted as saying by the Politico.
When asked if the conditions that led to the outbreak of war last month were still in place, he said: “If you call the commitment to terrorism a source of tension, absolutely, it is.”
When asked about losses, Jaishankar said the relevant authorities would address the matter at the right time.
He said that India’s fighter aircraft and missiles had inflicted far more extensive damage on the Pakistani Air Force than vice versa, forcing Pakistan to sue for peace.
“As far I’m concerned, how effective the Rafale was or frankly, how effective other systems were – to me the proof of the pudding are the destroyed and disabled airfields on the Pakistani side,” he said.
“The fighting stopped on the 10th for one reason and one reason only, which was that on the 10th morning, we hit these eight Pakistani, the main eight Pakistani airfields and disabled them,” he said, adding that images are available in Google showing runways and those hangars which have taken the hit.
He said, terrorism should be addressed as a global issue rather than a bilateral problem.
Addressing the Indian community members in Belgium, Jaishankar apprised them of India’s counter-terrorism efforts.
Talking about Operation Sindoor, which was launched after the April 22 Pahalgam attack, Jaishankar said during his talks with Belgian counterpart Maxime Prevot, he mentioned the 2016 Brussels attack to “drive home the point that look, terrorism is not, you know, a particular country’s problem.”
“Don’t look at this, because often, you know, the media, which is not always free of bias, tends to present it saying, you know, there is an India, Pakistan issue, or, you know, this is about Kashmir,” he said. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
