Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has told the New York Times in an interview that Pakistan was “ready to cooperate” with “any investigation which is conducted by international inspectors”. The minister said India had used the aftermath of the militant attack as a pretext to suspend the IWT and for domestic political purposes. India was taking steps to punish Pakistan “without any proof, without any investigation”, he added. “We do not want this war to flare up, because flaring up of this war can cause disaster for this region,” Asif told the publication. Asif rebutted India’s allegations by asserting that the proscribed organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was “defunct” and had no ability to plan or conduct attacks from Pakistan. “They don’t have any setup in Pakistan,” he told the NYT. “Those people, whatever is left of them, they are contained. Some of them are under house arrest, some of them are in custody. They are not at all active,” the minister said.
According to NYT, Asif said the attack could have been a “false flag” operation carried out by the Indian government to provoke a crisis.
The defence minister asserted that for the last decade, India had been trying to get out of the treaty, which has been a source of stability in the region.
“They were creating excuses. They were creating problems that were not there,” he was quoted as saying. “They have now found an excuse to get out of this arrangement.”
In a separate interview with Sky News, Asif had warned of an “all-out war” if India carried out any attack on Pakistan.
“If there is an all-out attack or something like that, then obviously there will be an all-out war,” Asif said, adding that the world should be “worried” by the prospect of a full-scale military conflict in the region.
