Brussels/New Delhi, June 10 (UNI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who is visiting Belgium, has said in an interview to Politico that India is not going to live with terrorism emanating from Pakistan anymore, and that New Delhi stands ready to strike deep in Pakistan if provoked by terrorist attacks.
“It [Pakistan] is a country very steeped in its use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy. That is the whole issue,” Jaishankar told Politico during a visit to Brussels.
Asked if the conditions that led to the outbreak of war last month were still in place, he said: “If you call the commitment to terrorism a source of tension, absolutely, it is.”
Asked to clarify about reports of Indian fighter jets downed by Pakistan, Jaishankar didn’t deny the destruction of Indian Air Force planes, but said the appropriate authorities would communicate on the matter when ready.
He stated that India’s fighter planes and missiles had inflicted far more extensive damage on the Pakistani Air Force than vice versa, forcing Pakistan to sue for peace.
“As far I’m concerned, how effective the Rafale was or frankly, how effective other systems were — to me the proof of the pudding are the destroyed and disabled airfields on the Pakistani side,” he said.
“The fighting stopped on the 10th for one reason and one reason only, which was that on the 10th morning we hit these eight Pakistani, the main eight Pakistani airfields, and disabled them.”
“And don’t take my word for it, these are images which are available in Google. You can look at those runways and those hangars which have taken the hit,” Jaishankar added.
Jaishankar asserted that Pakistan was 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, then there is going to be retribution, and that retribution will be against the terrorist organisations and the terrorist leadership.”
“And we don’t care where they are. If they are deep in Pakistan, we will go deep into Pakistan,” he added.
