Pakistan foreign minister says India ‘warmongering’

NEW YORK, USA – India is “warmongering” over deadly clashes in disputed Kashmir, Pakistan’s foreign minister said Tuesday, January 15, while calling for talks to end the new hostilities.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar spoke out after Pakistan reported another of its troops had been killed in Kashmir while India’s prime minister has warned there can be no “business as usual” between the neighbors.

“We see warmongering,” Khar said at the Asia Society in New York where she hit out a statements by Indian politicians over the new tensions.

“It is deeply disturbing to hear statements which are upping the ante, where one politician is competing with the other to give a more hostile statement,” Khar added.

India says two of its soldiers have been killed in Kashmir, one beheaded, since January 6. Pakistan says three of its troops have been killed in that time, the latest on Tuesday.

The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars since their independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir. But Khar said the neighbors had to get over their “narrative of hostility” from the past six decades.

“The doors to dialogue are open,” Khar said. “We need to meet at any level, I think we need to call each other, we need to become mature countries which know how to handle their truth.”

The minister again denied Indian accusations that Pakistani forces had beheaded one of two soldiers that India says were killed in Kashmir on January 8. She said an inquiry had found “no evidence” of the deaths.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier called the beheading of an Indian soldier “unacceptable” and added there could be no “business as usual” with Pakistan. – Rappler.com