Asif hits back at joint US-India statement

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Friday rebuked the United States and India for issuing a joint statement calling on Pakistan to ensure that its territory is not used to launch extremist attacks.

Asif took strong exception to the statement as he pointed out "the irony of this statement coming during the visit of someone who was banned entry to the US for overseeing a pogrom of Muslims when he was CM Gujarat".

Lamenting the actions of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a tweet, the minister said that "he leads yet another campaign of state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir, which includes routinely maiming and blinding the local population".

"Across the rest of the country, Modi’s acolytes lynch Muslims, Christians, and other minorities, with impunity," he added.

The defence minister also stressed that "Pakistan has lost countless lives, and has been continuously at war with terrorism for decades now, owing to failed American interventions in the region".

"Perhaps President Biden should consider these facts the next time he fetes the Butcher of Gujarat," Asif said.

Yesterday, the White House issued a statement saying that both Modi and Biden "strongly condemned cross-border terrorism, the use of terrorist proxies and called on Pakistan to take immediate action to ensure that no territory under its control is used for launching terrorist attacks".

"President Biden and Prime Minister Modi reiterated the call for concerted action against all UN-listed terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb-ul-Mujhahideen," the joint statement had said.

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Washington wants India to be a strategic counterweight to China while Modi is seeking to raise the influence that his country, now the world's most populous, has on the world stage.

On the other hand, relations between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have been fraught for years. Since British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent ended in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir.

India has for years accused Pakistan of helping rebels who have battled Indian security forces in its part of Kashmir since the late 1980s. Pakistan denies the accusation and says it only provides diplomatic and moral support for Kashmiris seeking self-determination.

The special status given to the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked in 2019 when New Delhi split it into two federally controlled territories. Pakistan calls the moves illegal and wants them rolled back.

India's decision led the two countries to downgrade their diplomatic ties.

Notably, the defence minister had previously said that Pakistan did not have any issues with the partnership between the US and India ‘as long as it does not come at the expense of Pakistan’.

In an interview with Newsweek, the minister emphasised the importance of maintaining positive relationships with neighbouring countries and regional partners, including India, particularly in the context of the Kashmir issue.