India to flag Pak's terror role with global lenders after Pahalgam attack

Country also set to voice its concerns with the IMF executive board next week, when it takes up a $1.3 billion loan for Pakistan

India is not only set to red-flag the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) fresh $1.3 billion loan tranche for Pakistan, expected to be considered by its executive board on May 9, but is also gearing up to caution other global institutions and lenders like the World Bank on their engagements with its troublesome neighbour, a top government source said on Friday.

 

The heinous Pahalgam attack has prompted the government’s top brass to ramp up the offensive against Pakistan and re-emphasise the country’s role as a perennial terror sponsor at global fora. India has traditionally abstained from voting on multilateral loans to Pakistan, but last year, for the first time, it had mooted the IMF place caveats on such loans to ensure they were not used for arms purchases or defence spends, and loan repayments to other countries. “We will discuss the issue with other multilateral development banks (MDBs) and global financial institutions as well,” the official source said.

 

Prior to the Pahalgam terror attack, India had planned to caution the IMF board when it took up the second instalment of a $7 billion loan the Fund had agreed to provide Pakistan, about the latter’s plan to invest in the New Development Bank, backed by the Brics nations. Pakistan’s NDB membership pitch is aimed at reducing its dependence on western lenders even as it sought to borrow billions of dollars from them, and India intended to highlight this anomaly.

 

After the April 22 terror attack, India posited it had cross-border linkages, and suspended the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) until “Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”. India’s efforts to sensitise the IMF and other multilateral lenders of Pakistan’s role as a sponsor of terrorism is part of New Delhi’s non-kinetic responses to rev up the pressure on its neighbour to mend its ways. Officials in the Indian military on Friday said that since Prime Minister Narendra Modi led a top-level security review on April 29, it has become clear that India will opt for a military reprisal in addition to the diplomatic measures it has taken or announced against Pakistan.

 

“The message is very clear — those who planned, abetted, and executed this atrocity will face decisive consequences at a moment of India’s choosing,” the officials said. Even so, the Indian military has shown strategic restraint, especially in the face of “unprovoked violations” of ceasefire agreements by the Pakistan Army over the past week, the officials said. The Indian Army, has, for instance, “scrupulously avoided hasty across-the-Line-of-Control forays”, they said, adding that Pakistan’s nightly firings are because its security establishment wants to “mask terrorist infrastructure and provoke an Indian over-reaction”.

 

According to other officials, the Indian military thwarted another cyberattack attempt by Pakistan-based hackers. They said the targets included the websites of two Indian Army public schools and the Army’s Institute of Hotel Management. “These attempts were promptly identified and neutralised by cyber-security agencies.” India and Pakistan continued to exchange small-arms fire across the LoC during the intervening night of May 1-2. The Indian Army said in a statement that Indian troops “responded in a calibrated and proportionate manner”.

 

Meanwhile, international efforts to de-escalate the tensions between the two South Asian neighbours have continued. The UN Security Council could meet “sooner rather than later” to discuss the situation between the two neighbours, and this would be an opportunity to express views and to help diffuse tensions, Permanent Representative of Greece to the UN and UNSC President for the month of May, Ambassador Evangelos Sekeris said in New York on Thursday.

 

In an interview to Fox News on Thursday, Vice-President J D Vance said the US hopes that India would respond to the Pahalgam terrorist attack in a way that does not lead to a “broader regional conflict” and expects Pakistan to “cooperate” with New Delhi to “hunt down” militants sometimes operating from their soil. Vance and his family were in India on a four-day visit when the attack, where 26 people were killed, took place on April 22.

 

According to a media report from Islamabad, Pakistan is planning to issue a diplomatic notice to India against its “unilateral move” to suspend the IWT. The report quoted unnamed sources within the Indus Commission that the notice will seek concrete explanations from India for its suspension of the landmark treaty.

 

In a related development, Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif’s YouTube channel was blocked in India on Friday. The government had earlier this week blocked 16 Pakistani YouTube channels.

 

The Opposition Congress on Friday evening held a meeting of its top decision making, the Congress Working Committee, where party chief Mallikarjun Kharge said the government had not come out with any clear strategy to deal with the situation arising out of the terror attack. A CWC resolution said the entire country awaits accountability, answers and justice on the Pahalgam terror attack.

 

The SC on Friday directed authorities not to deport to Pakistan six members of a family, who allegedly overstayed their visa, till their citizenship claim is verified. The family, which lives in Kashmir and whose sons work in Bengaluru, faced deportation to Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people lost their lives. Advocate Nanda Kishore, appearing for the family, claimed they had valid passports and Aadhaar cards.

 

(With agency inputs)