Over the past decade and half, the country has suffered from extremism, the PM’s adviser on foreign affairs Syed Tariq Fatemi told RT
Pakistan has lost 90,000 people to terrorists over the past 15 years, Syed Tariq Fatemi, special assistant on foreign affairs to the country’s prime minister, has told RT.
Fatemi emphasized that the Pakistani government is determined to counter terrorism and has made it clear to its neighbors that they must prevent such extremists from entering the country.
“We have lost over a billion and a half US dollars in terms of the damage that they have done,” he told RT in an exclusive interview. The diplomat was in Moscow earlier this week to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and brief him on Islamabad’s view of the current situation in Indo-Pakistan relations.
Speaking about the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, that killed 26 people, mainly tourists, Fatemi re-iterated that Pakistan denies having any involvement in the attack, refuting New Delhi’s claim. The region has been the epicenter of a long-standing dispute between the two neighboring countries since their independence from Britain.
The terrorist attack prompted a military response from India, which conducted air strikes on what it alleged were terrorist bases in Pakistan. After a four-day escalation, the two nuclear-armed nations announced a ceasefire on May 10.
Fatemi claimed that it would be impossible for terrorists to cross from Pakistan into Indian-administered Kashmir without being detected, given the heavy presence of the Indian military in the area. “They would need to be superhumans,” he noted.
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The political adviser drew parallels to a similar incident that occurred in the 1990s, when Pakistan was accused of collusion in a terrorist attack during the administration of former US President Bill Clinton, before his scheduled visit to India. “From past experience, whenever a very prominent foreign leader would visit India, something like this would take place,” he said, adding that former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later hinted in her book that the attack had been a false flag operation and that Pakistan had had nothing to do with it.
The senior adviser also expressed appreciation for the White House’s efforts to broker a ceasefire between the two countries, citing US President Donald Trump’s directive to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to speak with leaders in both New Delhi and Islamabad. “The US Secretary of State suggested that Pakistan should agree to a ceasefire, which is what the Indians wanted. So we said, ‘fine’,” he explained.
Notably, India denied Washington’s role in the ceasefire, maintaining that the decision was achieved bilaterally – at the initiative of Pakistan.
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