Pakistan's Defence Minister admits backing terror groups, says did this dirty work for US

Pakistan's Defence Minister Khwaja Asif has admitted to funding and backing terrorist groups, as per an ANI report.

In a video clip that has now gone viral, Pakistan's defence minister is in conversation with Sky News's Yalda Hakim, when she asks him, "But you do admit, you do admit, sir, that Pakistan has had a long history of backing and supporting and training and funding these terrorist organisations?

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Khwaja Asif in his reply says, "We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about 3 decades... and the west, including Britain...That was a mistake, and we suffered for that, and that is why you are saying this to me. If we had not joined the war against the Soviet Union and later on the war after 9/11, Pakistan's track record was unimpeachable."

Pakistan's Defence Minister has also, in the interview warned of an "all-out war" possible with India. Asif's statement lays bare the fact that Pakistan, for many years, has been harbouring these terror groups, ANI said.

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Earlier, India's foreign secretary Vikram Misri had said that in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security, the cross-border linkages of the terrorist attack were brought out. It was noted that this attack came in the wake of the successful holding of elections in the Union Territory and its steady progress towards economic growth and development.

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Following the terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people, the Central government announced several diplomatic measures, such as closing the Integrated Check Post (ICP) at Attari, suspending the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme (SVES) for Pakistani nationals, giving them 40 hours to return to their country, and reducing the number of officers in the High Commissions on both sides.

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India also halted the Indus Waters Treaty signed in 1960 in the wake of the Pahalgam attack.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured the country that the terrorists responsible for this attack, along with those who conspired it, will face punishment beyond their imagination. The Prime Minister asserted that the time has come to eliminate the remaining strongholds of terrorism and that the willpower of 140 crore Indians will now break the backbone of the perpetrators of terror.

(With ANI inputs)