No nuclear signalling from Pakistan: Foreign Secretary tells House panel
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told a parliamentary committee on Monday that the conflict between India and Pakistan was always in the conventional domain, and there was no nuclear signalling by the neighbouring country, sources said.
The sources said Misri reiterated the government’s stand that the decision to stop military actions was taken at a bilateral level, as some opposition members questioned US President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions about his administration’s role in stopping the conflict.
When some opposition members of the Standing Committee on External Affairs, which is headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, prodded him on the US leader’s repeated attempts to take centre stage, India’s top diplomat quipped that Trump did not seek his consent for doing so.
No other country, the foreign ministry in its presentation said, has “any locus standi” to comment on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, a clear repudiation of the US’ suggestion for mediation between India and Pakistan.
The US leader had even claimed that his country stopped a likely nuclear war that could have killed millions of people.
Misri is learnt to have told the panel that India conveyed to the Pakistan DGMO after the May 7 strikes that it had targeted terror sites, and that it did not want to escalate the tension.
An Opposition member wanted to know the whereabouts of terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack on April 22 in which 26 people were killed, and what India was doing to capture them.
Another member was said to have inquired about the steps being taken by the government to isolate Pakistan on the global stage and how India intends to put pressure on the US to put Pakistan back on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list.