Pakistani leader makes a bizarre offer to form 'historic, phenomenal partnership' with India to fight terror

Even as the foreign ministers of the four-nation Quad grouping called for bringing the perpetrators, organisers and financiers of the Pahalgam terror attack to justice without any delay—but stopped short of naming Pakistan—former Pakistani foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari urged India to form a partnership to combat the very menace it is accused of nurturing—terrorism. He also asked India to resolve the outstanding issues between the two nations.

 

Speaking at an international conference on 'Pakistan fighting the war for the world against terrorism' at an institute in Islamabad,  Zardari claimed that his country is ready to form a “historic, phenomenal partnership with India to jointly combat terror,” according to a Dawn report.

 

The remarks by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) chairperson come barely a few weeks after he claimed that the threshold of a full-out military conflict between India and Pakistan is the "lowest in our history."

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Zardari said India and Pakistan should fight terrorism "not as adversaries playing a zero-sum game, but as neighbours who share a moral and civilizational obligation to save a billion souls from the plague of extremism."

 

Even as he made this ironic offer to jointly fight terror, the Pakistani politician couldn't resist the chance to taunt Indian leadership as he asked them to "step down from the high horse heading into the abyss."

 

Claiming that Pakistan too has been a victim of terrorism and that there is “no religion or border for terrorists”, he asked the Indian leadership to engage in dialogue to resolve “all outstanding issues.”

 

India and Pakistan saw a tense four-day military standoff following Operation Sindoor, launched to target terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.

Defence