India protests drone breach, harassment in Pakistan

India has twice lodged protests with Pakistan in the past couple of weeks over developments involving the Indian high commission in Islamabad. While the latest protest relates to a drone which was flown over the Indian mission late on June 26, hours before the drone attack on an air force base in Jammu, another protest was lodged last week over harassment of Indian diplomats in Islamabad.
The drone flew over the Indian high commission premises while a diplomatic event was underway there. The MEA has asked Pakistan to probe the incident and ensure that such security breaches don't take place in the future.
"We expect Pakistan to investigate the incident and prevent recurrence of such breach of security," said spokesperson Arindam Bagchi.
Pakistan's foreign ministry quickly denied the incident claiming that this "propaganda campaign" by India was taking place at a time when "evidence" collected in the Lahore blast of June 23 was "increasingly pointing to external forces with a history of perpetrating state-sponsored terrorism against Pakistan".
The incident though follows cases of harassment of Indian diplomats in Islamabad against which India had lodged a protest last week. There was also another case of security breach last month in which strange activities involving civilians were noticed outside the Indian mission. India had then too officially lodged a protest, as reported by ToI on June 9.
These developments have again exposed the vagaries of India's ties with Pakistan, coming as they do after the 2 countries approved all pending visas for diplomats last month allowing their respective missions to work at the sanctioned strength. The February ceasefire understanding has held though with army chief MM Naravane confirming this week that there had been little or no infiltration since the 2 DGsMO agreed to address each other’s core issues and concerns
India, however, refrained from linking the Jammu drone attack with Pakistan for now as the government said investigations were still on. The government reiterated though that Pakistan needed to take credible, verifiable and irreversible action against terrorist networks and their proxies and to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai and Pathankot terror attacks.
"As far as terrorism and terror financing is concerned, we have a zero-tolerance policy. We condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," Bagchi said, when asked about the attack in Jammu and FATF's decision to retain Pakistan in its Grey or Increased Monitoring List for not acting against UN designated terrorists.
"All countries must take credible action against terrorism including by putting an end to cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorist safe havens and infrastructure and their financing channels," he added.