India on Tuesday flatly denied Pakistani assertions of aggressive troop deployments along their common border, saying it had carried out no military movements beyond a ”normal winter exercise”.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals have flared in the wake of the November Mumbai attacks that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
Reacting to his Pakistani counterpart’s charge that India had deployed ground forces to forward positions and activated forward air bases near the border, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said no such action had been taken.
”We have not created any tension,” Mukherjee told the Press Trust of India (PTI).
”First there should be escalation from the Indian side, then the question of de-escalation will come. We have not escalated anything,” the minister said.
Any troop movement on the Indian side was part of a ”normal winter exercise”, Mukherjee told PTI.
He said Pakistan’s call for India to ease tensions was an attempt to distract attention from India’s demand that Pakistan crack down on the training camps of militant groups blamed for the Mumbai attacks.
”We are only asking that you fulfil these commitments you have made,” Mukherjee said.
”Kindly dismantle the infrastructural facilities, dismantle the camps… up to now we have not seen any such thing,” he added. — AFP