NEW DELHI:
Pakistan will not obtain water from the rivers on which India has rights, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, increasing the rhetoric in a confrontation on access to water triggered by a deadly attack at IIOJK.
The legal director of Pakistan, in an interview with Reuters, replied that Islamabad remained willing to discuss the sharing of water between the neighbors, but said that India had to stick to an old decades.
“Pakistan will have to pay a high price for each terrorist attack … The army of Pakistan will pay him. The economy of Pakistan will pay him,” Modi told Rajasthan.
“Pakistan is ready to speak or respond to anything, all the concerns they may have,” Pakistan Attorney General told Reuters, Mansoor Usman Awan.
He said India has written in Pakistan in recent weeks, citing demographic growth and clean energy needs as reasons to modify the treaty. But he said that any discussion should participate in the terms of the treaty.
Islamabad maintains that the treaty is legally binding and that no part can unilaterally suspend it, Awan said.
“With regard to Pakistan, the treaty is very operational, functional and all that India does, it does at its own costs and risk with regard to the construction of any hydroelectric energy projects,” he added.
The ceasefire between countries has largely held. The Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said that there was no current exchange of fire and “there had been a certain repositioning of the forces accordingly”.
