Sukkur

Following the deadly Pahalgam terror attack, India took a firm step by announcing the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. In response, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari resorted to empty rhetoric in a speech during a public rally.

While addressing a public gathering in Sukkur on Friday, Zardari stated that just as the PPP did not approve a controversial canal project without consensus, Pakistanis will stand united and give a resounding response to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aggression on the Indus River, Geo News reported.

The PPP chairman said, "The brave people of Sukkur have sent a clear message by participating in the rally that we will not allow anyone to bargain over the Indus...The Modi government is unilaterally suspending the Indus Water Treaty...but I want to stand by the Indus River in Sukkur and give a clear message to India that the Indus River is ours and will remain ours, either our water will flow from this Indus or your blood."

A day earlier, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khwaja Asif had admitted that his country has been funding and backing terrorist groups.

In a video clip that went viral, Pakistan's Defence Minister was in conversation with Sky News's Yalda Hakim, when she asked him, "But you do admit, you do admit, sir, that Pakistan has had a long history of backing and supporting and training and funding these terrorist organisations?"

Khwaja Asif in his reply said, "We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about 3 decades... and the west, including Britain...That was a mistake, and we suffered for that, and that is why you are saying this to me. If we had not joined the war against the Soviet Union and later on the war after 9/11, Pakistan's track record was unimpeachable."

The Pakistani Defence Minister in the interview with Sky News presenter Yalda Hakim warned of an "all-out war" possible with India.

Asif's statement lays bare the fact that Pakistan, for many years, has been harbouring these terror groups.

Following the terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people, the Central government announced several diplomatic measures, such as closing the Integrated Check Post (ICP) at Attari, suspending the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme (SVES) for Pakistani nationals, giving them 40 hours to return to their country, and reducing the number of officers in the High Commissions on both sides.

India also halted the Indus Waters Treaty signed in 1960 in the wake of the Pahalgam attack.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi also assured the country that the terrorists responsible for this attack, along with those who conspired it, will face punishment beyond their imagination. The Prime Minister asserted that the time has come to eliminate the remaining strongholds of terrorism and that the willpower of 140 crore Indians will now break the backbone of the perpetrators of terror.