India summons ‘top Pakistani diplomat’, calls all-party meet after IIOJK attack on tourists

NEW DELHI, APR 24 (DNA): India has summoned the top Pakistani diplomat to New Delhi, local media reported on Thursday, a day after it announced measures to downgrade ties with Islamabad as relations between the nuclear-armed rivals plummeted following a deadly attack in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

A day after suspected militants killed 26 men at a tourist destination in the occupied territory’s Anantnag district in the worst attack on civilians in the rejoin in nearly two decades, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri claimed there was cross-border involvement in the attack and New Delhi would suspend a six-decade-old river-sharing treaty (Indus Water Treaty) as well as close the only land crossing between the neighbours.

India will also pull out its defence attaches in Pakistan and also reduce staff size at its mission in Islamabad to 30 from 55, Misri said.

India has summoned the top diplomat in the Pakistan embassy in New Delhi, local media reported, to give notice that all defence advisers in the Pakistani mission were persona non grata and given a week to leave, one of the measures Misri announced on Wednesday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for an all-party meeting with opposition parties on Thursday, to brief them on the government’s response to the attack.

In Islamabad, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is scheduled to hold a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) to discuss Pakistan’s response, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a post on X.

The Indus Water Treaty, mediated by the World Bank, split the Indus River and its tributaries between the neighbours and regulated the sharing of water. It had so far withstood even wars between the neighbours.

India would hold the treaty in abeyance, Misri said.

Diplomatic ties between the two countries were weak even before the latest measures were announced as Pakistan had expelled India’s envoy and not posted its own ambassador in New Delhi after India revoked the IIOJK in 2019.

Tuesday’s attack is seen as a setback to what Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have projected as a major achievement in revoking the special status of IIOJK enjoyed and bringing peace and development to the long-troubled Muslim-majority region.