Pakistan conveys demarche to US envoy over Biden-Modi joint statement

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday summoned United States (US) Deputy Chief of Mission to Foreign Office (FO) and conveyed a demarche regarding the US-India Joint Statement issued after a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden, ARY News reported.

“The US Deputy Chief of Mission was called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) this evening and a demarche was made to him regarding the June 22 US-India Joint Statement,” the foreign office spokesperson said in a statement.

The FO spokesperson noted that Pakistan’s concerns and disappointment at the unwarranted, one-sided and misleading references to it in the Joint Statement were conveyed to the US side.

“It was stressed that the United States should refrain from issuing statements that may be construed as an encouragement of India’s baseless and politically motivated narrative against Pakistan,” it added.

The statement concluded by saying that it was also emphasised that counter-terrorism co-operation between Pakistan and US had been progressing well and that an enabling environment, centered around trust and understanding, was imperative to further solidifying Pakistan-US ties.

It is pertinent to mention here that the White House issued a statement saying that both Modi and Biden “strongly condemned cross-border terrorism, the use of terrorist proxies and called on Pakistan to take immediate action to ensure that no territory under its control is used for launching terrorist attacks”.

“President Biden and Prime Minister Modi reiterated the call for concerted action against all UN-listed terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb-ul-Mujhahideen,” the joint statement had said.

‘Misleading statement’

Earlier, the Foreign Office (FO) termed the US-India joint statement issued against Pakistan ‘misleading and unwarranted’.

“We consider the Pakistan-specific reference in the ‘Joint Statement from the United States (US) and India’ as unwarranted, one-sided, and misleading,” FO Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said while responding to media queries in this regard.

The FO spokesperson noted that the reference is contrary to diplomatic norms and has political overtones. “We are surprised that it has been added despite Pakistan’s close counterterrorism cooperation with the US,” she added.

She added that Pakistan was deeply concerned over “the planned transfer of advanced military technologies to India”, saying that such steps “are accentuating military imbalance in the region and undermining strategic stability”.