August 28, 2006 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Disarmed as it is by the need to keep the farcical ‘peace process’ going, India’s comment on Pakistan’s killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was mild. According to India, the killing was a “tragic loss” and “unfortunate”, as if the old Nawab had died in a car accident.
But the Pakistani foreign office took great offence to even this.
A spokesperson said the statement “is not only against the well-established norms of inter-state relations but also a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a neighbouring country.”
It said India’s “purported” concern for the people of other countries was “ill-advised” considering it had so many of insurgencies of its own — the statement contained a long list of insurgencies in the North-East — that were being “suppressed by force.” [The Hindu]According to Pakistan, only perfect, faultless countries can offer comment on others’ internal affairs. The good officials at Pakistan’s foreign office did not have to explain how this squares with Pakistan’s own gratuitous comments on the Middle-East, India and Europe.
India should have anticipated such a reaction from Pakistan. That’s why offering a mild comment was neither here nor there. The right thing to do was to condemn the undemocratic practice assassinating political dissidents. Pakistan would have been hard pressed to react any more vociferously than it just did.
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