SRINAGAR: Accusing Pakistan of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that India has decided not to live with terror anymore.
Jaishankar, who is on a Europe tour said, “Pakistan is a country very steeped in its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy. That is the whole issue.”
The minister warned that India would strike deep into Pakistan if provoked by terrorist attacks. “There will be retribution against the terrorist outfits and their leaders in case of barbaric acts like the Pahalgam attack.”
“Pakistan is training thousands of terrorists in the open and unleashing them on India. We are not going to live with it. So our message to them is that if you continue to do the kind of barbaric acts which they did in April (Pahalgam terror attack), then there is going to be retribution. We don’t care where they are. If they are deep in Pakistan, we will go deep and target them,” he added.
Commenting on last month’s India-Pakistan skirmishes, Jaishankar said, “If you call the commitment to terrorism a source of tension, absolutely, it is.”
He said that India’s fighter aircraft and missiles had inflicted far more extensive damage on the Pakistani Air Force than vice versa, forcing Pakistan to sue for peace.
“As far as I’m concerned, the proof of the pudding is the destroyed and disabled airfields on the Pakistani side,” he said.
“The fighting stopped on the 10th (May) for one reason and one reason only, which was that on the 10th morning, we hit the main eight Pakistani airfields and disabled them,” he added. (KNO)
