RAWALPINDI – Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar on Wednesday trashed the reports of a deal with the ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and said such reports were “baseless speculations”.
Addressing a media briefing in Rawalpindi, Maj Gen Iftikhar said there was no truth in these reports. Whoever speaks on the matter, please ask them where they get such reports, he told a reporter of a private news channel. He said that relations between the civil and military leadership were quite stable.
DG ISPR Press Conference – 5th Jan 2022 https://t.co/U6hdAgWoev
— DG ISPR (@OfficialDGISPR) January 5, 2022
Speaking about the Pak-Afghan border fencing issue, Major General Babar Iftikhar said that Pakistani forces would continue unilateral fencing of nearly a 2,600 kilometres long border with Afghanistan.
He said that removing the fence from the Afghan side of the border was an act of some local elements. “We are in contact with the current Afghan interim government. Fencing on the Pak-Afghan border will continue as per the strategy,” he said.
The border fence was erected after completing security operations in the erstwhile tribal areas of Pakistan and 94 percent of work on the fence along the Pak-Afghan border has been completed. On the Pak-Iran border, 71 percent of work on the border fence has been completed, he said. The border fence will be completed and it will stay there. “The is a fence for peace,” the spokesman said.
‘India moving towards religious extremism’
Speaking about India, he termed Indian claims about infiltration through the Line of Control (LOC) ridiculous and called out the Indian Army for targeting innocent Kashmiri civilians.
He said the LOC remained calm throughout the year in 2021, but the Indian Army staged fake encounters. “Indian allegations hint at a political agenda,” the army spokesman said.
Both sides had agreed to a ceasefire in 2003 and after it came into force in February 2021, the peace returned to the border, he said. The development brought improvement in the lives of the people living on both sides of the border, he said.
Commenting on threats from the Modi-led government, he said they depicted a specific political thinking, which had dragged India to religious extremism. Indian measures under the incumbent government will have a negative impact on the region, he warned.
India has turned Kashmir into a place of worst humanitarian crisis as the occupied territory has been under siege since August 2019.
The presser of the Pakistan Army spokesperson comes as Kashmiris living in the Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir and around the world observe the Right to Self-Determination Day.
India killed innocent people as it attempted to externalise the indigenous freedom struggle of the Kashmiris”, he said. The ISPR DG also said that India put the region’s peace at stake through its defence procurement. On the Line of Control, they were doing propaganda about infiltration, he said.
He mentioned a fake encounter in Neelum Valley in the Kirin Sector in which Indian forces killed an innocent Kashmiri and then blamed Pakistan.
Smear campaign against state institutions
The Pakistan Army spokesperson said that a campaign had been launched against the state institutions of Pakistan to undermine people’s trust in these institutions. He said that some elements within the country and outside the country had launched a smear campaign against the state institutions and persons and the armed forces were well aware of their activities.
He said, “We are not only aware of these activities, we also know their linkages.” He said that some elements inside and outside Pakistan were using these “half-truths, fake news, and concocted false propaganda” to target the institutions and important figures and harm Pakistan. “These people failed in the past and they will fail in the future,” he said.
