India summons Pakistan High Commissioner, issues demarche

Coinciding with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's speech at the UN General Assembly, India on Wednesday issued a strong demarche by handing over details of Pakistan's culpability in the latest terrorist attack on the Army's Brigade Headquarters in Uri to Pakistan's High Commissioner Abdul Basit. Foreign secretary S Jaishankar, who called in the Pakistan High Commissioner to his office in South Block, offered to share DNA samples of terrorists killed in the Uri and Poonch incidents, if Islamabad wished to investigate these attacks.

Jaishankar reminded Basit that a solemn commitment had been made by his country in January 2004 to not allow its soil or territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India. The commitment was made by then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during his Islamabad trip on the sidelines of the SAARC summit.

The trip and the commitment opened the road for the peace process, which led both countries to devise a formula to settle the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. But the process got buried with the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.

Jaishankar warned Basit that the persistent and growing violation of the 2004 undertaking was a matter of serious concern. Officials said that dusting out the 2004 Joint Statement gave a subtle message to the world, as well as Pakistan, that India was ready to pick up the threads of peace, if the taps of terrorism against it are turned off. Officials say that this would blunt Islamabad's diplomatic blitzkrieg against New Delhi, which solely depends on the hype that India was refusing to join talks across the table.

Jaishankar, who read the demarche to the Pakistani diplomat, said the latest terrorist attack on the Army's Brigade Headquarters in Uri had underlined that the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan remains active. "We demand that Pakistan lives up to its public commitment to refrain from supporting and sponsoring terrorism against India," he said.

Tracing provocations, Jaishankar said that 2016 started with the Pathankot airbase attack in January and continued with attempts by armed terrorists to cross the LoC and international boundary in order to carry out further attacks. He mentioned that 17 such attempts have been interdicted at or around the LoC, resulting in the elimination of 31 terrorists. The Foreign Secretary also reminded Basit that even as he spoke, two engagements at the LoC were ongoing.

Giving details of recoveries from the terrorists who struck Uri, Jaishankar said the items included: a GPS from the bodies of terrorists with coordinates that indicate the point and time of infiltration across the LoC and the subsequent route to the terror attack site; grenades with Pakistani markings; communication matrix sheets; communication equipment; and other stores made in Pakistan, including food, medicines and clothes.

In the coming days, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is looking to escalate diplomatic pressure on Pakistan by supporting Pakistani dissidents in exile, holding up the threat of abrogating the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), and withdrawing trade concessions. While there is an assessment that that abrogating of the IWT will be immediately struck down by the International Tribunal, other measures like banning over flight rights to Pakistan and snapping trade connections have not worked in the past. India has been in touch with Bangladesh and Afghanistan within the South Asian Association for Regional Corporation (Saarc) for taking a collective decision about boycotting the summit.

Jaishankar, who cut short a trip to Vienna to return for discussions over India's response to the Uri attack, has drawn up these measures with an assessment to both national security adviser Ajit Doval and to home minister Rajnath Singh. India is, however, relieved that the world's major nations have condemned the Uri attack and are willing to criticise Pakistan, but may come to intervene if tensions escalate.

Even staunch allies of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar — all members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – have condemned the attack. "The foreign ministry expresses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's strong condemnation and denunciation of the terrorist attack that targeted an Indian military base in the Uri area of north Kashmir, killing and wounding dozens," Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday decried the way Prime Minister Modi was trying to deal with Kashmir issue. Rahul said that the Prime Minister was treating the issue as yet another "event management exercise" and blamed him for a "shortsighted political alliance with the PDP that opened the space for terrorism in Kashmir."

Regretting that the Modi government had no strategy on Kashmir, Rahul tweeted: "We want to see a concrete, long-term strategy, not an event-based approach." In another post on Facebook, he said: "The Prime Minister goes from one event to another event and this is no way of handling national security that cannot be handled like public meetings. This is a serious matter."

Condemning Pakistan for killing Indian soldiers, Rahul extended support to the government with a rider. He said: "The Congress is ready to help in whatever way possible as far as our soldiers and Government of India is concerned. However, we would like a concrete strategy, a long-term strategy and not this event based activity, because this is extremely dangerous for the country."