Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif warns of striking Kolkata in future conflict with India
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif warns of striking Kolkata in future conflict with India")
Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif said that India is planning to stage a false flag operation to blame Pakistan. Photograph: (AFP)
Referring to the ongoing Middle East crisis, defence minister Khawaja Asif expressed hope that Pakistan’s efforts to mediate peace talks between the US and Iran would succeed. Pakistan is playing an important role in the ongoing US-Iran negotiations, he said.
Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif on Saturday warned that it would strike as deep as in Kolkata, the eastern Indian city near the border with Bangladesh, in any future conflict with India. Speaking to reporters in Sialkot, his hometown, Asif claimed that India is planning to stage a false flag operation to blame Pakistan and warned of a strong reaction in case of such a “drama”.
He said, “If India tries to stage any false flag operation this time, then God-willingly, we will take it to Kolkata.”
Asif claimed that India is planning to carry out a false-flag operation by using their own men or Pakistanis in detention, “by laying down some bodies somewhere and saying ‘they were terrorists and had done so and so’.”
However, he did not provide any evidence in support of his claim.
On Thursday, he had said that Pakistan’s response to any attack would be “swift, calibrated, and decisive.”
Asif made the remarks after India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that any “misadventure” from Pakistan in the prevailing situation would invite an “unprecedented and decisive” response from India.
The Pahalgam attack that took place on April 22 last year resulted in a four-day conflict between the two countries.
“The kind of insult they faced around a year ago […] the entire world, in fact, their own public, taunts them that they are five times larger than Pakistan in every aspect—population, resources, military, airforce,” he added.
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The minister asserted that the Indian leadership would keep facing such backlash “till the end of the world”.
Referring to the ongoing Middle East crisis, Asif expressed hope that Pakistan’s efforts to mediate peace talks between the US and Iran would succeed.
“Pakistan is playing an important role in the ongoing US-Iran negotiations,” the minister said.
He added that Pakistan aims to promote “regional stability” and hopes the ongoing negotiations will lead to a resolution of disputes.
“Repeated rhetoric reflects not strength, but visible strategic anxiety as the anniversary of the staged false-flag operation in Pahalgam approaches—an episode that failed to withstand international scrutiny and exposed New Delhi’s reliance on manufactured crises,” Asif had said in a post on X, while tagging Singh.
