Pakistan Monday rubbished the notion of Islamabad receiving live Chinese input during the military conflict with India, terming New Delhi’s claims to that effect as “irresponsible and factually incorrect.”
The 87-hour confrontation between India and Pakistan turned out to be an embarrassment for New Delhi as Pakistani Air Force shot down several Indian planes and in retaliation to Indian strikes into its cities launched its own operation targeting Indian military sites.
India launched around 80 fighter jets on May 7 to attack what it called terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani cities of Lahore and Bahawalpur and Pakistan-administered part of disputed Kashmir region.
Indian military action followed weeks of tension over allegation that a terrorist attack in Pahalgam area of Indian-administered Kashmir was linked to Pakistan-based militant groups.
In reaction, Pakistan fought back downing six planes including French Rafale high-tech jets.
The conflict ended when U.S. President Donald Trump intervened and announced a ceasefire on May 10.
Since then, India has sought to frame the conflict as India vs Pakistan and China.
On Monday, Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, speaking at the National Defense University in Islamabad, dismissed New Delhi’s claim.
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According to a statement Gen Munir said India’s “inability” to achieve its military objectives during “Operation Sindoor” and the subsequent claims signified “its lack of operational readiness and strategic foresight.”
“Insinuations regarding external support in Pakistan’s successful Operation Bunyanum Marsoos are irresponsible and factually incorrect and reflect a chronic reluctance to acknowledge indigenous capability and institutional resilience developed over decades of strategic prudence,” Munir said, according to Inter Services Public Relations, the military’s media wing.
He noted that naming other states as “participants in the purely bilateral military conflagration is also a shoddy attempt at playing camp politics and desperately trying that India remains the beneficiary of larger geopolitical contestation as the so-called net security provider in a region which is getting increasingly weary of its hegemonic and extremist Hindutva ideology.”
Gen Munir spoke after India’s Lt Gen Rahul R Singh, Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Capability Development & Sustenance) claimed that during DGMO-level talks held between India and Pakistan from May 7 to 10, China provided Pakistan with “live updates” on critical Indian military vectors.
Singh said, “the country tests its weapons against other weapons, and therefore, Pakistan played the role of a ‘live lab’ for the Chinese military.”
“When the DGMO (director general of military operations) level talks were going on, Pakistan … said that we know that your such and such important vector is primed and it is ready for action … he was getting live inputs from China,”
The Indian general did not elaborate on how India knew about the live inputs from China.
In his comments, the Pakistan army chief also warned India against any future attacks.
“Any attempt to target our population centers, military bases, economic hubs and ports will instantly invoke a ‘deeply hurting and more than reciprocal response’. The onus of escalation will squarely lie on the strategically blind arrogant aggressor who fails to see the grave repercussions of such provocative actions against a sovereign nuclear state,” he said, according to the ISPR statement.
