New Delhi: Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir’s nuclear threat from the US soil showed that the neighbouring country is an “irresponsible” nuclear state and there is a danger of the weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors, government sources said on Monday.
In an address to the Pakistani diaspora in Florida’s Tampa, Munir reportedly made the nuclear threat in case his country faced an existential threat in a future war with India.
The Pakistani Army Chief also warned that Islamabad would destroy Indian infrastructure, if they hit water flow to Pakistan.
The sources said Munir’s statement was part of a pattern, adding that “whenever the US supports the Pakistan military, they always show their true colours.”
They described the comments as symptomatic of the absence of democracy in Pakistan, where “it is their military which controls.”
“Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had earlier warned that Pakistan’s non-state actors can compromise its nuclear weapons and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should bring Pakistan’s nuclear weapons under its monitoring,” sources said.
“Pakistan’s reckless nuclear threats have not deterred India’s resolve to eliminate terrorism. I ask the global community — are nuclear weapons safe in the hands of such an irresponsible and rogue nation? These weapons must come under IAEA supervision,” they said.
Repeating his anti-India rhetoric, Munir had warned that Islamabad would be prepared to plunge the region into nuclear war and “take almost half of the world” down if the country faced an existential threat in a future conflict with New Delhi, The Print reported.
His remarks also included a threat directed at industrialist Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man.
“We are a nuclear nation; if we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us,” Munir had said.
While addressing the Pakistani diaspora in Tampa, Florida, Munir had threatened to destroy under-construction Indian dams with missiles, saying, “We will wait for India to build a dam, and when it does so, phir 10 missile sey faarigh kar dengey (we will destroy it with 10 missiles).”
He added, “The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property. Humein missailon ki kami nahin hai (we have no shortage of missiles).”
He also said that Kashmir is the “jugular vein” of Pakistan.
According to highlights of his speech to the Pakistani community, Munir said Kashmir is “not an internal matter of India but an incomplete international agenda. As the Quaid-e-Azam had said, Kashmir is the ‘jugular vein’ of Pakistan.”
Munir said his second visit to the US after a gap of one and a half months marks a new dimension in Pakistan-US relations.
He added that the aim of these visits is to take the relations on a constructive, sustainable and positive path.
Munir also said that Pakistan is extremely grateful to Trump, whose strategic leadership has stopped the war between India and Pakistan as well as prevented many other wars around the world.
