India on Thursday gave a scathing warning to Pakistan for its continued "reckless, war-mongering and hateful comments" against New Delhi, calling it a "well-known modus operandi" of Islamabad's leadership to create anti-India narratives and deflect attention from its domestic deficiencies.
At the weekly media briefing, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesman Randhir Jaiswal warned Pakistan against taking any provocative step, and told them that such action would have "painful consequences.
"We have heard a number of such statements. We have heard a series of reports about a recurring trend of irresponsible, war-hungry and vengeful rhetoric by the Pakistani leadership against India. It is the well-known Pakistani leadership modus operandi to raise anti-India rhetoric repeatedly in order to cover up their own failures.". Pakistan would be wise to cool its rhetoric, because any adventure will prove costly, as recently shown," Jaiswal stated in a reaction to queries on the statements of Pakistan's Army Chief, General Asim Munir.
The MEA responded after General Munir, on his recent trip to the United States, asserted Pakistan would never allow India to "choke" the Indus River. He is said to have pledged that the Pakistani army will raze any dam India tried to build on the river to protect what he said were Pakistan's water rights.
We will wait for India to construct a dam, and when they construct it, we will destroy it. The Indus River is not the Indians' family property. We have no dearth of resources to reverse the Indian plans to block the river," Munir was quoted as saying by Pakistan's top daily, Dawn, at an event organized by Pakistani-American community members in Tampa, Florida, last week.
India, which has insisted time and again that it would not yield to nuclear blackmail, had already reacted strongly to Munir's statements.
Jaiswal said on Monday, "Our attention has been drawn to statements allegedly made by the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff during a visit to the United States. Nuclear sabre-rattling is Pakistan's stock-in-trade. The world can make its own assessment on the irresponsibility underlying such a statement, and also fuel the well-founded suspicions about the reliability of nuclear command and control in a state where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist organizations.
The MEA also lamented that inflammatory remarks like these were uttered on the soil of a friendly third country.
"It is also unfortunate that these comments should have been delivered from the soil of a friendly third country. India has already indicated that it will not succumb to nuclear blackmail. We will go on taking all measures required to ensure our national security," the statement added.
This is not the first time India has reacted against aggressive remarks from the military top brass of Pakistan. In April, New Delhi vehemently protested against General Munir's mention of Kashmir as Islamabad's "jugular vein."
"Look, how can something alien be their jugular vein? This is an Indian Union Territory. Its only connection with Pakistan is the vacation of illegally-occupied areas by that nation," Jaiswal commented during the April 17 press briefing.
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