NEW YORK: Pakistan was not involved in the Pulwama incident in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), a spokesman of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington said, while deploring India’s habit of blaming everything that goes wrong on his country.
In a letter to The Washington Post, spokesman Abid Saeed expressed disappointment over the newspaper’s February 20 editorial for its “sweeping and one-sided commentary and reliance on unverified Indian media accounts.”
“The editorial,” he said, “overlooked India’s history of blaming everything that goes wrong in IOK, or even in India, on Pakistan.”
“The frenzy that the Indian government has whipped up around the Pulwama incident has already resulted in innocent Kashmiris being attacked and hounded across India. This is happening on top of the unspeakable atrocities they have suffered over the decades that are duly documented in international reports,” he said.
Already, the spokesman said, voices within India were urging it to look inward instead of blaming Pakistan for events in Kashmir.
“The editorial spoke of India’s ‘right to defend itself’ without even hinting at the Kashmiris ‘right of self-determination’ promised to them by the United Nations (UN),” he wrote.
“Pakistan wants the Indian government to present the ‘incontrovertible evidence’ it claims to have. The Pakistani prime minister has offered India cooperation and action if credible evidence is provided. We expect India to respond positively to these offers,” he added.
“As a victim of cross-border terrorism, Pakistan is ready to work with India and others to address this menace in our region. India should be counselled restraint because, as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said, starting a war is easy but ‘ending it would not be in our hands’,” he concluded.
