Imran Khan warns of possibility of conventional war with India

Imran Khan said Pakistan would never start a war. Pic/PTI

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said there was no question of talking to New Delhi after it revoked the special status to Jammu and Kashmir, as he warned about the possibility of a conventional war with India which could go beyond the subcontinent.

"So that's why we have approached the United Nations, we are approaching every international forum, that they must act right now," he said. Khan said he "absolutely" believes war with India could be a possibility. "...this is a potential disaster that would go way beyond the Indian subcontinent," Khan said.

He said that Pakistan would never start a war. "I am a pacifist, I am anti-war, I believe that wars do not solve any problems," he told Al Jazeera. "When two nuclear-armed countries fight, if they fight a conventional war, there is every possibility that it is going to end up into nuclear war. The unthinkable," he said. "If say Pakistan, God forbid, we are fighting a conventional war, we are losing, and if a country is stuck between the choice: either you surrender or you fight 'till death for your freedom, I know Pakistanis will fight to death for their freedom," he said. Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked after New Delhi abrogated provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution to withdraw Jammu and Kashmir's special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories.

'Pak will break into pieces'
Pakistan should stop promoting terrorism, otherwise no one will be able to prevent it from "breaking into pieces", Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in Surat on Saturday. "By doing the politics of religion, they (British rulers) divided India into two pieces. But you must have seen that during 1971, Pakistan, which was made on the basis of religion, was broken into two pieces. And if this kind of politics goes on, no one in the world will be able to stop Pakistan from breaking into pieces," he asserted. "The way Pakistan is promoting terrorism, it should stop doing so, otherwise no one can stop it from further breaking into pieces in future," Singh said.

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