Avoid escalation, US tells India, Pakistan

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, April 17

Refraining from commenting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s remarks that India will not hesitate to kill terrorists in their homes, the US has instead called on India and Pakistan to avoid escalation and find a resolution through dialogue.

Asked at a media briefing whether the Biden administration was concerned about such statements, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “As I have said before, the US is not going to get into the middle of this. But we do encourage both India and Pakistan to avoid escalation and find a resolution through dialogue.”

On April 11, Prime Minister Modi had said during the tenure of the BJP government “terrorists are being killed in their own homes’’.

Miller also refrained from commenting on whether the US will impose sanction on foreigners found involved in attempts at assassinations on its soil. “I am never going to preview any sanction actions, which is not to say that there are any coming, but when you ask me to talk about sanctions, it’s something that we don’t discuss openly,” said Miller. The question was aimed at eliciting a response on the Indian Government’s recent admission that a rogue RAW official, who has since left the service, was behind the abortive attempt to kill Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. An Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, who spilled the beans to an undercover US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent is in custody and has been charged with murder-for-hire of Pannun.