From China to Laos: Why was Modi targeting Pakistan, ‘exporter of terror,’ in China and Laos?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a new twist to Islamabad’s trade balance with the world, telling the international community with a straight face that Pakistan’s sole competitive advantage lies in exporting terror.
Mr Modi’s unstinting indictment of Pakistan at two back-to-back multilateral summits has taken many by surprise. His remarks at the G20 summit in China and East Asia Summit in Laos, singling out Pakistan’s “sponsorship and export of terror,” were part of an “offensive defence” strategy designed to put a belligerent Islamabad under stress.
Why has Mr Modi, who started his stint in power by inviting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, along with other SAARC leaders, for his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi, and followed it up with a surprise trip to Lahore in December last year, has turned up the heat on Islamabad? There is no point in indulging in esoteric speculation; one does not have to look far for reasons for Mr Modi’s vehement Pakistan-bashing. It’s clearly a sense of betrayal and promises not kept.
As he is not going to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) this year, PM Modi has leveraged the two multilateral summits to expose Pakistan before the international community and send a strong message to Islamabad that duplicity and deception will not work any longer. Read more…
