Daily Times

NEW DELHI – Former president Pervez Musharraf has asked India not to overreact to Pathankot IAF base terror attack, as such incidents would keep happening in the future due to the prevalence of terrorism in Pakistan and India, reported by the India Today.

In an interview to a private TV channel, he said that both India and Pakistan and India were victims of extremism and that incidents like Pathankot will 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 not get hyper over such incidents,” he said.

Accusing India of creating pressure on Pakistan when it came to terror attacks, he said, “India’s first reaction to every terrorist attack is Pakistan but India is not free of terrorism or extremism themselves. India simply can’t create pressure on Pakistan when it comes to terrorism. We may be a small country but we have honour of our own.”

“India always treats terrorism as a one-sided issue and that infuriates me. They can’t just bulldoze us when something happens there,” he said, stating that there are lots of areas in India where extremism is rampant.

Ahead of January 15 the foreign secretary level talks in Islamabad, India has mounted pressure on Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of Pathankot attack. New Delhi has said that talks will depend upon Islamabad’s ‘prompt and decisive’ action for which it has provided ‘actionable intelligence’.

Comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership with that of his former counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he said that ties between Pakistan and India 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. He also said that there was a lot of disgruntlement among the Muslim community in India since Modi came to power.

“It was just a case of ‘showmanship’ and there was nothing substantial about his visit,” the former president said, on Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore last month.