Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged India and Pakistan to show restraint as tensions have risen between the two nations following an attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir’s Uri.
In her concluding speech in Parliament on Thursday, Hasina said the nuclear-armed neighbours needed to behave in a restrained manner and should avoid spiking up tensions.
“We want that the people of South Asia do not suffer due to that.”
Tensions have escalated sharply since last week when India announced its special forces had carried out a strike against militants camped on the Pakistan side of Kashmir and inflicted significant casualties.
Pakistan denied such a strike had taken place but vowed to retaliate against any Indian aggression.
Hostility has been high since an Indian crackdown on dissent in Kashmir following the killing of a young separatist leader by security forces in July.
But the latest round of tensions between the neighbours over Kashmir began after militants killed 19 soldiers in an Indian army camp on Sep 18, the deadliest toll in nearly two decades.
India said the attackers had come from Pakistan but Islamabad demanded credible proof.
Advising the two nations to avoid conflict, Hasina said, “We want peace to sustain in South Asia. We never want any kind of conflict or tension to occur in South Asia.”
Such conflict between the countries in the same region will also hurt Bangladesh, she added.
On Thursday, Indian soldiers shot dead three suspected militants who tried to raid an army base in northern Kashmir, the latest in the wave of attacks, reported Reuters.
The three men were found in an orchard near the army base in Kupwara district near the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
The attack came as the countries exchanged more gunfire across the de facto border, despite a 2003 ceasefire, setting off panic among residents in border areas.
India, which had already launched a diplomatic drive to isolate Pakistan, later announced to boycott the SAARC regional summit that was scheduled to be hosted by Pakistan in November.
When Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan followed suit afterwards, the summit was cancelled.
Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full, but govern separate parts, and have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
A deeply concerned United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also recently urged the countries to take ‘immediate steps to de-escalate’ the Kashmir situation and offered to act as a mediator.
Source: Bd news24
