New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that the biggest problem for India in its relations with Pakistan is to find “who is running the country” and should be engaged for talks.
In an interview to India TV’s Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma in front of nearly 2,500 people at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here, he said that he had made friendly gestures to both Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan but these were not reciprocated.
Describing his sudden visit to Pakistan in 2015 while returning from Afghanistan, he said Sharif called him over to Lahore to meet him.
Modi said that his visit was intended to send a message that India does “not bear any ill-will towards Pakistan”.
“I discussed with Sushmaji (External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj), she said ‘you decide’. I talked to NSA, SPG. Everybody was worried, since the officials had no visas nor were there any security arrangements in place, neither did anybody knew about the layout (of the place). We will have to land straight. I said ‘Come on, let’s go, we’ll see.”
He describe Sharif as a “genuine person”.
“They were being fed lies about India. The message went to them that India desires the well-being of the people of Pakistan. We returned, and within a week, Pathankot (attack) happened,” he said, referring to the attack at the IAF airbase in the Punjab border town.
Modi said that when Imran Khan became PM, they talked over phone. “I told him that both the countries have fought several wars, and every time Pakistan was defeated. Both of us as Prime Ministers should work towards eradication of poverty in the next five years,” he said.
However, then came incidents like Pulwama.
“The biggest problem with Pakistan is that nobody knows who is running the country and whom we should talk to,” he said, adding that his experience with Pakistan was not isolated but leaders from the US, China, Russia, the Gulf and Arab countries share the same views.
Modi said he was told by several world leaders that he would not come to know whom to talk in Pakistan. “Whom will you talk to… with the Army, with the ISI? Or, with an elected body? The leaders told me, ‘We ourselves don’t know who runs that country’.”
“Let Pakistan resolve its problems first,” he added.
Modi said that the Indian air strike on a terrorist camp in Pakistan’s Balakot would have been ranked “among one of the major military operations of the world”, had it not been for “politics”.
Modi was asked what had prompted the early release of captured Indian Air Force pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. The PM replied cryptically: “That was a (terrible) night. There are many mysteries buried in (the darkness of) that night. Let those mysteries stay where they are,” he added.
Speaking at length about the air strike on Balakot, Modi said in the absence of the general election, the air strike would have ranked among one of the major military operations of the world.
In a sharp jibe at the Opposition, who sought credible evidence of the strike, he said: “Any citizen of India has the right to demand evidence… political leaders also have the right to demand evidence, but then, accepting those evidences is also their responsibility. The problem (with Opposition) is they demand and demand, but do not accept. The biggest evidence (of Balakot air strike) is Pakistan itself.”
He argued that after the air strike, Pakistan was in a quandary. “If it admitted that the air strike caused damage, the world would know that there was a terrorist camp there. It was a lone residential building housing 600 people on a hill surrounded by trees. So, to hide this, they had to do something,” he added.
Recounting the sequence of events on the day of the strike, Modi said: “As per our strategy, we were to meet in the morning to plan something. At 3.30 am, when the operation was over, and our pilots and aircraft returned, took off their uniforms and were sipping tea and joking among themselves… But I was curious, to find out how the world took this. I started surfing online for international news.”
He said that at 5.15 am, the Pakistan Army tweeted saying that Indian aircraft had dropped their payload and left. Such a reaction was self-explanatory that they were trying to gain sympathy, he added.
On the dogfight between Indian and Pakistan jets, a day after the air strike, Modi said it was a Pakistan fighter plane which had crashed, and its pilot died, but they said that an Indian plane was downed.
“They had lost their balance, and they are still to come out of that trauma,” he added.