Jaitley Hints At Hunting Down Masood In Pak, Imran Calls For Talks

New Delhi: As tension continued to rise at the LoC following the aerial engagement on Wednesday and indications from Indian establishment of hunting down dreaded terrorist Masood Azhar, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan offered talks with India to settle all outstanding issues.

Khan’s offer came even as senior cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi government Arun Jaitley reminded the neighbour that India has the capability of doing a US seal like covert operation to eliminate terror elements in Pakistan. He was talking about the US action in 2011 to eliminate Osama Bin Laden.

In a daring pre-dawn operation in the summer of 2011, US navy seals carried out a surprise operation at Abbottabad in Pakistan and eliminated Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 deadly terror attack in USA that claimed over 3000 lives.

“I remember when US Navy Seals (commandos) went to Abbottabad to kill (Al-Qaeda chief) Osama bin Laden, then why can’t India? This used to be only an imagination, a wish, a frustration and disappointment. But it’s possible today,” Jaitley said at an event here flanked by cabinet ministers Nitin Gadkari and Dharmendra Pradhan.

Jaitley was the defence minister before Nirmala Sitharaman was given charge of the ministry in late 2017.

Tension between the two neighbours escalated further this morning after India knocked down a Pakistani F-16 and Pakistan claiming to have shot down two IAF jets.

As north Indian space was closed down and alerts issued across border states and towns following the aerial skirmish, the Pakistan PM made a televised address, proposing talks between the two countries.

“Let us open the corridor of negotiations and settle all outstanding issues,” Khan said. “We should sit down and talk about differences”.

“We offered India every possible support into the investigation into the Pulwama attack. That’s not in Pakistan’s interest to promote terrorism. It is not in the interest of Pakistan that its soil should be used for exporting terror. Similarly, Pakistani soil cannot be subjected to terror,” he said.

He went on to add that all wars in the world’s history have been miscalculated. “Those who started the wars did not know where it will end. So, I want to ask India, with the weapons you and we have, can we afford miscalculation?” he asked.