Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said that the Pahalgam attack was the original escalation in the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, adding that the Indian Armed forces only responded to the escalation yesterday.
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00:00This is, as I said, further to the briefing that was provided yesterday and some of the
00:07updates that have been just provided by Colonel Qureshi and Wing Commander Singh.
00:15I thought that we would just put some of the aspects related to the events that started
00:25on 22nd April with the barbaric terror attack in Pahalgam into further context because there
00:35is a certain amount of commentary that has happened with regard to the events since then.
00:40And more than the commentary, there has been a lot of disinformation that has been directed
00:46at us from across the border.
00:51So a few things that I would like you to keep in mind.
00:59First of all, there is mention on all sides of escalation.
01:08I think the first point that you have to keep in mind is the attack of 22nd April in Pahalgam
01:16is the original escalation.
01:23Secondly, I want to invite your attention to the involvement of the group calling itself
01:30the resistance front in these attacks.
01:37the resistance front in these attacks.
01:38I pointed this out yesterday that this is a group that is a known front for the well-known
01:44Pakistan-based terrorist organization.
01:45attention to the involvement of the group calling itself the resistance front in these attacks
01:56i pointed this out yesterday that this is a group that is a known front for the well-known
02:05pakistan-based terrorist organization lashkar-e-taiba the group has been reported earlier i mentioned
02:15to you about the indian authorities providing information to the u.n 1267 sanctions monitoring
02:25committee and in fact we are going to be meeting with the team again very soon and we will be
02:33providing an update to the information that we have provided earlier but what is interesting
02:41the just part of it is that when in the administration of the administration
02:46when they were talking about a press
02:49this was after the fact that the trs claimed responsibility for this attack not once but twice
03:10within a few hours after the incident on the 22nd of april and then again on the morning of 23rd april
03:19and it is perhaps only after the full gravity of the incident was realized by its masters and
03:25handlers across the border that it was managed to back off from this claim obviously that retraction
03:33doesn't convince anybody
03:39the third thing which i wanted to say was that colonel qureshi and wing commander singh
03:48we are only responding to the original escalation as i said
04:01It is non-escalatory, precise, strategic, measured, and considered.
04:08Our intention has not been to escalate matters.
04:14We are only responding to the original escalation, as I said.
04:18And our response has been targeted, precise, controlled, and measured.
04:23Only military, no military targets have been selected.
04:28Only terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan has been hit.
04:35Now, there are, as I said, a number of issues that have been raised in commentaries.
04:48And there's a lot of, as I said, unfounded disinformation and fabrication that has come from across the border.
04:58And I would just like to use this opportunity to set the record straight on some of these issues.
05:06The first of these is Pakistan trying to wash its hands off any and all involvement with terrorism.
05:18I think the Pakistani information minister said there are no terrorists in Pakistan.
05:22And I think he was challenged on that in the television program that he was appearing on.
05:29But even if I partially repeat myself from yesterday, I think Pakistan's reputation as the epicenter of global terrorism is rooted in a number of instances
05:47where concrete evidence, where concrete evidence is available, not just to India, but to governments and authorities and agencies around the world.
05:56There are several terrorist attacks around the world where Pakistani fingerprints have been found.
06:03I don't need to belabor the point with regard to this audience about where Osama bin Laden was found and who called him a martyr.
06:17Pakistan has also for decades pursued cross-border terrorism into India with impunity.
06:26And in, as I said yesterday also, in order to deliberately mislead the international community,
06:35they claimed that the terrorist Sajid Meir was dead.
06:39They came under pressure and Sajid Meir was then brought back to life, arrested, and is now apparently in Pakistani custody.
06:49Pakistan is also home to a very large number of UN-proscribed terrorists, as well as terrorists proscribed by a number of other governments in the world,
07:02including, of course, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jais-e-Mohammad, as well as their leaders, Masood Azhar and Hafiz Mohamed Saeed.