Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A day after Pakistan’s Army chief “Field Marshal” General Syed Asim Munir compared India and Pakistan with a “Mercedes” and a “dumping truck”, respectively, and also reiterated the nuclear threat, New Delhi dismissed Islamabad’s “nuclear sabre-rattling” as an old stock-in-trade.
After the Operation Sindoor, India has repeatedly junked Pakistan’s “nuclear blackmail” and declared that it will no longer distinguish between state and non-state actors if the terrorists attack it again.
In a statement on Monday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) condemned Munir’s threat of a nuclear war, noted that nuclear sabre-rattling is Pakistan’s stock-in-trade, and regretted that such remarks were made from the soil of a third country, the USA.
Munir has been invited to attend the CENTCOM chief’s farewell meeting, his second visit to the USA in two months.
Addressing a gathering of people of Pakistani origin in Florida’s Tampa, Munir reportedly made a nuclear threat in case his country faced an existential threat in a future war with India, the media reported.
“The international community can draw its own conclusions on the irresponsibility inherent in such remarks, which also reinforces the well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in a state where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist groups,” the MEA said.
It also reaffirmed New Delhi’s position of not giving in to “nuclear blackmail” and assured that it will continue to take all necessary steps to safeguard national security.
Munir’s remarks showed Islamabad is an “irresponsible” state with nuclear weapons, analysts said, pointing out that the Pakistani military always showed its true colours with support from the United States.
The remarks of Pakistan’s de facto military ruler show there is a real danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors in that failed nation.
“It is a symptom that democracy doesn’t even exist in Pakistan; it is their military which controls the country,” they added.
Munir reportedly threatened to take down “half the world” if Pakistan faced an existential threat in a future war with India. The remarks were the first nuclear threats known to have ever been delivered from the US soil against a third country.
“We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us,” he said, according to reports.
Munir also warned of destroying any infrastructure that India builds on the Indus water channels– which could impede water flow to Pakistan– saying his country has no dearth of missiles. He claimed that New Delhi’s decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty into abeyance after the Pahalgam terror attack in April could put 250 million people at risk of starvation.
“We will wait for India to build a dam, and when it does so, phir das missile sey faarigh kar dengey (we will destroy it with 10 missiles)…The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property. Humein missilon ki kami nahin hai, al-hamdulillah (we have no shortage of missiles, Praise be to God!),” Munir reportedly said.