No details about India’s plan to seal border by 2018, says Pakistan

Islamabad: India has not formally conveyed any plan of sealing its border with Pakistan by December 2018, the country’s Foreign Office has said.

In a response to home minister Rajnath Singh’s statement that India would completely seal the border with Pakistan by December 2018, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria on Friday said, "We don’t have any details."

Zakaria said the Indian government talked of establishing a peaceful neighbourhood but their actions contradicted their claims, Dawn online reported.

The remarks come as India and Pakistan are locked in a diplomatic acrimony and border tension after the September 18 terror attack on a military base in Kashmir’s border town of Uri that killed 19 soldiers.

Days later, India carried out surgical strikes against terror launch pads and killed an unspecified number of terrorists in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Zakaria regretted that India had till date shared no evidence on the Samjhauta Express attack in February 2007, despite New Delhi’s commitment at the highest political level to share the details in relation with the terror attack, which killed mostly Pakistanis.

The attack was carried out by Rashtriya Seva Sangh and Abhinav Bharat’s operatives, he said, adding that Islamabad “has and will continue to raise the issue” with India.

Zakaria said that Pakistan was actively highlighting the Kashmir issue across Europe, Britian, North America and Nordic states, and this was the reason why “India is desperate and is making every effort to deflect attention” from the matter.

"Manifestations of these efforts are visible in their false media campaigns and false surgical strikes claim and other things like that. So, these are the reflections of the desperation of India and the pressure which is being built on India in the context of the brutalities it is committing in Kashmir."

"We have been asking for the international community’s intervention in this regard and we will keep on asking for this," he said.

Zakaria said there should be a probe over unrest in the Valley, which has left more than 90 people dead since July 9, a day after the killing of top militant Burhan Wani in a gunfight with security forces.

About Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s statement that the government has no intention of providing proof of the surgical strikes, Zakaria said, "the blatant lie stood exposed now".

Commenting on New Delhi’s diplomatic blitz to isolate Islamabad in the region as well in the world, Zakaria said Pakistan was “not facing international isolation” and was very much engaged in world affairs.

According to him, a number of multilateral events and high-level visits were taking place in and out of Pakistan.

"More and more countries are engaging with Pakistan. Pakistan’s strategic location is of immense importance," he said, citing the examples of Russia and Iran’s recent engagements with Islamabad.