Former Pakistan President General (retired) Pervez Musharraf has called on India to not ‘overreact’ to the terror strike on the Pathankot IAF base saying that both nations were victims of extremism and also accused New Delhi of creating pressure on Islamabad over terrorism.
Speaking in an interview to a Pakistani news channel, Musharraf said that terrorism was prevalent in both India an Pakistan due to which incidents like Pathankot would keep happening. “Terrorism is prevalent in both India and Pakistan. We are also victims of the same so we should not over react to what happened in Pathankot. Yes, of course we want to control such incidents, but one should get hyper over such incidents,” Musharraf said. “India’s first reaction to every terrorist attack is Pakistan but India is not free of terrorism or extremism themselves,” he added.
He also said that there was a lot of ‘disgruntlement’ among the Muslim community in India since Prime Minister Modi came to power. Comparing the Prime Minister’s leadership with that of his former counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he added that ties between India and Pakistan had flourished under the latter as he was more ‘sincere’ in his approach.
“I interacted with Vajpayee sahab and at the time we had very good ties with India. It all comes down to leadership in the end. We were moving forward with him and Manmohan sahab. Unfortunately, it’s not working under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. His popularity has dampened post his loss in Delhi and Bihar,” Musharraf said.
“Vajapayee and Manmohan were more sincere when it came to resolving dispute. A good leader is always flexible. Things can’t work out if you are hell-bent on your own stand,” he added.
