Pakistan minister Ahsan Iqbal (File photo)
“…Indus Water Treaty that has stood the test of time for the last 70 years. If India does not come to its senses, it will be responded to directly,” Sharif said on August 13, on the eve of Pakistan’s Independence Day. Because it is an international agreement, and this time around the Indian government has unilaterally held it in abeyance… first time probably water has been weaponised in history,” Iqbal told the Asia Society, india and Pakistan fought several wars, but it (IWT) was considered untouchable. Because we have already seen lots of wars,” the minister added, we are using all the diplomatic means to make sure that we don’t have future wars on water.
Pakistan minister Ahsan Iqbal has said India could “weaponise” the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) and expressed hope that “better sense” would prevail to prevent the two neighbours from going to war again, this time over water. He noted that the treaty had remained “untouchable” for almost seven decades since it was signed in 1960, but New Delhi has now been kept in abeyance “unilaterally. Iqbal’s remarks came days after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned India of a “direct response” for putting the IWT in abeyance.
“We (Pakistan) now face this threat that they (India) can use water as a weapon to deny Pakistan when it needs it for its crops and release it when we don’t need it… “India proved itself an enemy of peace by unilaterally and illegally suspending the Indus Waters Treaty. I declare in clear terms that every single drop of Pakistan’s water is our red line.