In a tit-for-tat response to Indian defense minister's threatening statement, Pakistan Tuesday warned that any Indian aggression and strategic miscalculation will get an equal and proportionate response. "Pakistan will pay India in its own coin in case of any Indian misadventure... . Any Indian aggression, strategic miscalculation, or misadventure regardless of its scale, mode, or location will not go unpunished and shall be met with an equal and proportionate response," said Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan in a statement to respond to his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman's threatening statement following an attack on a military base in Occupied Kashmir on Monday.
"We will defend robustly every inch of Pakistan's soil," Dastgir said. Instead of the knee-jerk reaction of blaming Pakistan without substantiation, he said, India must answer for state-sponsored espionage against Pakistan.
He stated that "living evidence in person of Kulbushan Jadhav is in front of the world." He said that India this week failed to deliver justice to the 42 Pakistanis murdered in the Samjhota Express terrorism eleven years ago. "India is destabilizing regional peace in word and deed; through irresponsible statements on nuclear deterrent and through its bloody, five-fold escalation in 2017 of attacks on unarmed civilians on the line-of-control and working boundary," he said.
"Pak Armed Forces are alive to all possibilities, and prepared fully to defend our country's territorial integrity," he asserted. Backed fully by the Pakistani people, he added that Pak forces are vigilant on land, sea, and air. "An aggressive Pak centric doctrine and arrayed forces under a belligerent regime leading to possible strategic miscalculation by India will seriously impact the strategic stability in South Asia," the defense minister added.
Spokesperson Foreign Office Dr Mohammad Faisal, while responding to the Indian defense minister's provocative statement, rejected the baseless allegations, saying that the now familiar Indian tendency of apportioning blame to Pakistan, without a shred of evidence, is regrettable. "The Indian allegations are premature and inopportune, especially as India itself admits that the operation still continued and investigations had just started, when these comments were made," he said.
"We have repeatedly seen India arrogating to itself the role of judge, jury and executioner. The reflex assignment of blame and smear campaigns, based on unfounded allegations, carry no credibility," he added. He stated that more deplorable is the threatening tone of the Indian comments that achieves nothing, but further vitiates the already tense environment marked by unprecedented ceasefire violations by India on the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary.
"Pakistan is fully committed and capable of defending itself against any act of aggression," he said, adding "We expect the international community to take cognizance of the belligerent and repeated Indian statements against Pakistan, which are not only against international law but also threatens regional peace and stability."
Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who visited the injured of the attack on the military camp, stated, "Our intelligence inputs indicate that these terrorists were being controlled by their handlers from across the border." "Pakistan is expanding the arc of terror... resorting to ceasefire violations (on the border) to assist infiltration. Pakistan will pay for this misadventure," she told reporters in New Delhi.