New Delhi trying to weaponise Indian public against us: Pakistani daily fires salvo

New Delhi, Sept 25: Political relations between India and Pakistan are tense at the moment in the wake of the cancellation of a foreign ministers' meeting at the United Nations General Assembly and the war of rhetoric that escalated between the two countries following that. After Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan lashed out at India over the cancellation of the meeting and Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat attacked Pakistan in strong words, it is time for the Pakistani media to express its disappointment over India.

In an editorial titled 'India's Tirade', Pakistan's major daily Dawn said "the growing belligerence of the Indian army in matters of national security and foreign policy has been noted with concern in recent years by independent regional analysts, and Gen Rawat's outrageous threats underline why India should carefully consider the long-term repercussions of injecting bellicose military rhetoric into the fraught Pakistan-India relationship."

The Dawn editorial also took a dig at General Rawat's remark that surgical strikes remained a weapon of surprise and must remain so when asked whether India was planning to carry out another surgical strike in the manner it did in September 2016.

"The army chief's comments have come in the run-up to the rather bizarre spectacle that India is planning this week: a so-called 'Surgical Strike Day' to commemorate the second anniversary of an 'attack' that Pakistan denies took place," the editorial said.

The piece also accused the BJP government of turning the Indian public against Pakistan and said such a move should make "all right-thinking and sensible citizens of the two countries" worried. It said the Indian government's plan of celebrations this week appeared to be a strategy to "weaponise" the Indian public against the neighbouring country. It said such an effort would shrink the space for dialogue towards normalising the ties between the two nuclear powered neighbours and give peace a lasting chance.

Editorial praises Pakistan

The editorial also praised the Pakistani establishment saying it "rightly avoided" the provocation made by bellicose rhetoric from across the border. It cited Major General Asif Ghafoor, the spokesperson of the Pakistani Army who said war is not a solution between the two countries even while warning India against "misadventure". It also said that Pakistan's information minister Fawad Chaudhry suggested that Islamabad is still willing to consider opening the Kartarpur corridor to a revered Sikh holy site on its soil.

'Imran Khan should have avoided the words'

The editorial also said that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan should have avoided the words he used on Twitter after India cancelled the foreign ministers' meeting but said: "that can eventually be attributed to personal disappointment and inexperience in office".