ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani Air Force spokesman says Indian aircraft violated Pakistani airspace but were chased back over the border late last night.
The violation comes amid heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed countries over last month’s deadly attack in Mumbai. India has said the attack had roots in Pakistan.
Pakistan Air Commodore Humayun Viquar says the Indian aircraft crossed over the border some 4 km in Azad Kashmir and over Lahore. He would not say how many Indian aircraft were involved or give the exact time.
Information Minister Sherry Rehman says the Indian Air Force had told Pakistan the incursion was “inadvertent.” However, attempts to get the Indian version were not immediately successful.
The Indian planes were fully equipped with warheads, said Pakistan’s Geo TV quoting highly placed defense sources.
Meanwhile, Islamabad rejected New Delhi’s accusations that it was the “epicenter of terrorism” and accused some Indian leaders of using it as a convenient scapegoat for their own political agendas.
“Because of domestic political compulsions, some Indian leaders have been looking for a scapegoat” for the recent Mumbai attacks, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said when asked to react to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s accusation. “And when you want a scapegoat, Pakistan is (for historical reasons) the obvious choice,” Qureshi told reporters in Paris, adding that “we have to rise above our petty politics for the larger interest of the region.” He did not name any of the Indian leaders he was referring to.
Singh made the accusation on Thursday and also said his country could not be satisfied with “mere assurances on an end to terror emanating from Pakistan.”
Qureshi insisted that Islamabad was at the forefront of the global fight against terror and noted that “India does not blame the Pakistani government” for last month’s carnage in Mumbai.
He said Islamabad was doing its utmost to crack down on any terrorist group in its territory, adding that Pakistan had offered to send a high-level team to carry out a joint probe with Indian officials into the attacks.
“We’ve made an offer. We’re waiting for their response,” he said, speaking on the eve of a meeting in Paris of senior envoys from Afghanistan, its neighbors and the world’s great powers to discuss the war-torn country’s future.
The talks will put Qureshi in the same room as Indian Deputy Foreign Minister Anand Sharma, but he said that neither he nor the Indian minister had requested a bilateral meeting in Paris.
