Pakistan saw ‘sharp’ 22 percent decline in militant attacks in April, says think tank 

ISLAMABAD: The head of a delegation visiting Brussels to present Pakistan’s point of view regarding the country’s recent military standoff with India said on Saturday that Islamabad can develop a “phenomenal” counterterror partnership with Delhi, similar to the one it has with Washington. 

India blames Pakistan for arming and funding militants who carry out subversive activities in the part of disputed Kashmir it governs, an allegation Islamabad has always denied. The two countries engaged in a military confrontation for four days last month after India accused Pakistan of supporting an attack at the Pahalgam tourist resort in Indian-administered Kashmir. Twenty-six people, mostly tourists, were killed in the attack. 

Pakistan enjoys counterterror cooperation with several countries, including the US, which includes intelligence sharing and other forms of coordination to thwart militant attacks. The head of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Kurilla, this week praised Pakistan as a “phenomenal partner” in counterterrorism efforts during a testimony. 

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is the head of the Pakistani delegation, pointed out that the US and Pakistan have thwarted “terrorist attacks” in Europe, the US and Pakistan through counter-terror coordination. 

“Will we be more effectively able to combat terror if India and Pakistan sat together and coordinated, conducted intelligence sharing,” Bhutto Zardari asked in response to a question. 

Citing Kurilla’s statement, Bhutto Zardari said Islamabad can develop a counter-terror partnership with New Delhi similar to the one it enjoyed with Washington. 

“We can develop that phenomenal partnership with India as well,” he added.

He lamented that there was no cooperation or coordination between the two nuclear-armed nations on combating “terrorism,” adding that the two countries last had a dialogue on counter-terror in 2012. 

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the nine-member diplomatic group last month, headed by Bhutto Zardari, who is a former foreign minister and the head of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

He has been leading a team to visits in New York, Washington DC, London and Brussels since June 2. Another delegation, led by Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Syed Tariq Fatemi, has visited Moscow.

While the ceasefire between the two countries continues to remain in place, tensions continue to simmer as India says it is holding in abeyance a decades-old water-sharing treaty with Pakistan. 

Islamabad had said after India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty that it considered any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan to be an “act of war.”

About 80 percent of Pakistani farms depend on the Indus system, as do nearly all hydropower projects serving the country of some 250 million.

Pakistan and India, bitter rivals, have fought two out of three wars over the disputed territory of Kashmir that they both claim in full but govern only parts of.

ISLAMABAD: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday stressed the need to enhance humanitarian relief and educational assistance for Palestinians bearing the brunt of Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement.

The Palestinian death toll from the 20-month Israel-Hamas war has passed 55,000, the Gaza Health Ministry said this week. Israeli forces have destroyed vast areas of Gaza, displaced about 90 percent of its population and in recent weeks have transformed more than half of the coastal territory into a military buffer zone that includes the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah.

Pakistan has dispatched several aid consignments for the people of Palestine since last year and also granted scholarships and admissions to hundreds of Palestinian students in Pakistani universities since the war began in 2023.

“Reaffirming Pakistan’s unwavering moral, political, and diplomatic support for the Palestinian cause, the DPM/FM emphasized the need to enhance the provision of humanitarian relief to the Palestinian people as well as to extend educational assistance to the Palestinian students,” the foreign office said.

The statement was issued after Dar chaired a meeting to review the status of the ongoing assistance provided by Pakistan to the people of Palestine.

“The DPM/FM expressed deep concern over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza & West Bank, resulting from Israel’s blatant violations of human rights,” the statement said.

The war between the two sides began when Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel and abducted 251 hostages. More than half the captives have been released in ceasefires or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered the remains of dozens more.

Israel’s military campaign, one of the deadliest and most destructive since World War II, has transformed large parts of cities into mounds of rubble. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in squalid tent camps and unused schools, and the health system has been gutted, even as it copes with waves of wounded from Israeli strikes.