Islamabad, Pakistan — As tensions ratcheted up over the last week of fighting, Pakistan did not consider deploying nuclear warheads to strike India, the country’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar told CNN on Monday.
In his first interview since India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire Saturday, Dar said Islamabad “had no choice” but to launch strikes in “self-defense” following India’s May 7 cross-border attacks.
Last week’s escalatory tit-for-tat strikes marked the worst fighting between the two nuclear-armed nations since 1971, killing dozens and deepening fears of a wider conflict.
Dar referred to India’s strikes as a “war” and a “wishful attempt to establish its hegemony” in the long-disputed Kashmir region – but said that the nuclear option was never on the table.
“There are certain times when you have to take very serious decisions,” he said, “We were very sure that our conventional capacity and capabilities are strong enough that we will beat them both in air and on ground.”
After the initial attack last Wednesday, Pakistan claimed it had used Chinese-made fighter jets to shoot down five Indian Air Force jets, including three Rafales, sophisticated French-made jets that New Delhi acquired only a few years ago. A French intelligence source told CNN that Pakistan had downed at least one Indian Rafale.
India has not responded to those claims
Following several days of fighting, Islamabad and New Delhi agreed to a US-brokered truce on Saturday, as explosions reportedly ripped through parts of Kashmir over one final burst of strikes.
While the agreement has so far appeared to hold, Dar told CNN that long-term negotiations between the two parties are “not done yet.”
“We still hope sense will prevail,” he said.
CNN