Modi creating war frenzy environment for elections: Fawad

 

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhary has said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is creating a war frenzy and is using the Pulwama incident for his personal political gains.

In an interview with Russian channel RT, Chaudhry said, unless elections are over in India, chances of moving forward towards peace appear to be difficult.

“In his first speech, Prime Minister Imran Khan asked India that if they are levelling allegations, then they should share the evidence of that. We have not received any evidence as yet. Then we offered them a chance for a joint investigation. We have not heard anything about that. Then we asked, let's talk on that, we did not hear anything about that either,” he said.

“Modi is using this incident [Pulwama] for his personal political gains. This is actually problematic when a politician that refuses to care about the lives of hundreds and millions of people, is just focusing on his own politics,” Fawad lamented.

“PM Imran even before taking oath, offered India that if you take one step, we will take two steps,” Chaudhary said. “Even after coming into power, the prime minister has not changed his policy. We opened the Kartarpur border for India, we started peace incentives in this region, but we have not received the same responses from them. [Prime Minister] Modi is trying to create this war frenzy environment for his own elections. We are waiting for these elections to happen and certainly, we can start again.

He further said Pakistan desires resolution of all disputes with India, including the core issue of Kashmir through dialogue. “We are offering India to become a partner in fighting terrorism.”

“We have three options. We have been neighbours for 70 years and have fought three wars. The first option is we can fight another war. The second option is we keep weakening each other,” Chaudhry said. “India sponsors terrorism in Balochistan and they continuously try to weaken us, and, of course, we can always try to weaken them.”

He continued, “The third option is that we talk to each other and become partners in fighting against terrorism. Now, we are offering this third option to India, what else can we do? This is what we are trying to convey to the Indian leadership, that the only way forward is that if we talk to each other.

Responding to a question the information minister said that they are not thinking in terms of conflict.

“We are thinking more in terms of peaceful resolution of things. But as far as this conflict is concerned, I think Pakistan has received huge world support,” Chaudhary said. “Russia has offered mediation, US President Donald Trump has asked for restraint and the European Union has actually said that India must not escalate things.”

“So we are not thinking in terms of conflict. We want to achieve peace and normalisation with India and stability in Afghanistan. These two I would say are the two most important goals of our government.