Pakistan Army not for peace with India: Brajesh Mishra

NEW DELHI - The Pakistan Army will never accept peace with India as its very existence depends on hostility towards New Delhi, former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra said here.

“This talk has also failed. And it would continue to fail, as in the past, as we have not yet grasped the reality that (the) Pakistan Army will never allow peaceful relations with India,” Mishra said Tuesday night.

He was addressing a conference on “Countering Terrorism in South Asia”.

Mishra was referring to the July 15 talks between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad that ended in discord.

“Pakistan Army’s hostility towards India is not because of Bangladesh, Kashmir or Siachen. Their very existence depends upon hostility towards India. Unless we grasp that, we would never able to deal with Pakistan,” he said.

“Pakistan Army will never allow peaceful relations with India,” he said at the conference organised by the Observer Research Foundation.

“Pakistan, which has been dependent on the US and Western countries for its survival, has cheated them. If we think we can have friendship and cooperation with Pakistan as long as the armed forces are the rulers there, I think, we are living in a fool’s paradise.

“How long are we going to say that Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism and therefore we are going to work together, when terrorist activities are directed against you?” he asked.

Mishra, a former aide to then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, highlighted the “unmitigated hostility of Pakistan and China” as the main challenges to India’s national security.

“If Taliban succeeds in going back to Kabul, as happened in (19)96, we are going to have a tremendous problem of fundamentalism and extremism in South Asia, Central Asia and other parts of the world,” he said.

“In such a situation, terrorism is going to increase as the situation in Afghanistan returns to what was in mid 90s. Then, what is the answer?,” he asked.