New Delhi: Congress veteran Mani Shankar Aiyar on Friday said that India should engage in dialogue with Pakistan and not flex its military muscles as it may irk Islamabad into deploying nuclear weapons against New Delhi, making him the second leader in recent days to warn about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. Earlier this week, National Conference (NC) chief Farooq Abdullah remarked sharply that Pakistan could resort to using atomic bombs if provoked.
An advocate of normalising India-Pakistan relations, Aiyar, a former diplomat, stated that the government can talk tough to Islamabad if it wants to but if it doesn’t respect the neighbouring country, it may have to pay a heavy price. “They have atom bombs. We have them too, but if a ‘madman’ decides to drop a bomb on Lahore, it won’t take 8 seconds for the radiation to reach Amritsar,” he warned.
“If we respect them, they will remain peaceful. But if we snub them, what happens if a ‘madman’ comes up and decides to launch bombs [at India]?” Aiyar asked. Aiyar said, “In order to become the vishwaguru, no matter how serious our issues with Pakistan are, we have to show that we are working hard to resolve them. But in the last 10 years, there has been no hard work [to this end].”
