OBSERVER REPORT LONDON Pakistan Army’s former officer, Lt Gen (r) Khalid Kidwai, on Friday warned India not to take Islamabad’s “nuclear capability as a bluff” and said that the country reserved its right to exercise all options to protect territorial and ideological interests in case of a war-like situation. The remarks, made by the former director-general of the Strategic Plans Division, retired Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai, were made while he gave a keynote address at a workshop held by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Titled “South Asian Strategic Stability: Deterrence, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” the workshop was attended by retired Lt Gen Amir Riaz, defence expert Hassan Askari, retired Brig Nadeem Ahmed Salik and former ambassador Ali Sarwar Naqvi, among others. The opening remarks of the workshop were available for public viewing but the remaining conference was held behind closed doors for a select group of people. The discussions held during the day-long conference on nuclear deterrence in South Asia remain off the record. “Pakistan must shoulder the responsibility of maintaining the vital strategic balance in the conventional and nuclear equation with India as the particular determinant of the state of strategic stability in South Asia,” retired general Kidwai said in his opening remarks. In his keynote, the former general spoke in great depth about the strategic positions of both India and Pakistan in the event of further escalation between the two hostile neighbours. “If Pakistan were to allow imbalances to be introduced in this strategic equation, South Asia would list more serious strategic instability,” he said. “This, in turn, would lead to catastrophic consequences in view of India’s historically persistent and insatiable drive for regional domination, especially given India’s current irrational, unstable and belligerent internal and external policies,” he added. “While developing operational plans, the Indian planners may deliberately prefer to skirt around Pakistan’s nuclear capability and nuclear thresholds,” Kidwai said. “Officials in India, I hope, don’t take Pakistan’s nuclear capability as a bluff,” he added. Speaking on the escalation of tensions between the two countries, Lt Gen (r) Kidwai said: “It is difficult to predict any kind of escalation management because the two sides do not have any indirect channels, track 2 or track 1 channel, and there’s a complete cut off between the two sides as was quite evident in the event of February 29 last year.” Indian fighter jets had attacked Pakistan in February last year but Pakistan had successfully repulsed the attack, downing an Indian jet and capturing the pilot, who was later released as a goodwill gesture by PM Imran. “We will lurch from one crisis to the other until a third party intervenes as it did in the crisis last year. It’s a very unhappy situation,” Kidwai said during his address.
