Taking note of Imran Khan's admission in the United States that Pakistan has trained terrorists that have then been sent o Jammu and Kashmir, India's foreign ministry on Thursday said Pakistan must now act on the acknowledgement and stamp out home-grown terror.
India has long maintained- with credible and substantial evidence - that Pakistan harbours terrorists and uses them to wage proxy wars in J&K. Imran too said as much at an event in the US. "Until we came into power, the governments did not have the political will, because when you talk about militant groups, we still have about 30,000-40,000 armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir," the cricketer-turned-politician-turned-PM had said.
In response to this admission, Raveesh Kumar - spokesperson of MEA, said that Pakistan ought to now mend its nefarious ways. "Since Pakistan PM has acknowledged the presence of training camps & of the fact that terrorists are being trained & sent to Kashmir to fight, it's time for them to take credible action against the terror camps that exist in the areas under the control of Pakistan," he said.
Pakistan has long sought to project itself as a victim of terrorism and has always denied providing any support or shelter to terrorists. Yet, the country's army and the Inter-Services Intelligence have been nurturing terrorists with the objective of carrying out anti-India activities. Cross-border infiltration along the J&K are almost always provided covering fire or shelling from the Pakistani posts. Even when Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammed claimed responsibility for the dastardly Pulwama attack earlier in 2019, Islamabad had feigned ignorance. This despite the proven fact that Pakistan has also long used a large portion of money and weapons supplied by the US to aid its battle against terror and channelled it against India.
Imran, for now, has been harbouring on dialogue on the Kashmir issue but India maintains that peace talks cannot proceed unless Pakistan takes affirmative action against terrorists on its soil.
