The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday dismissed a news article in a Pakistani website claiming Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar having ‘admitted’ that the surgical strike was a bluff.
The lead article in Pakistani daily News International Pakistan claimed that Jaishankar during a meeting with the German ambassador in New Delhi said that there were no surgical strikes in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
“News International Pakistan’s story titled “Indian FS admits surgical strikes was a bluff” is completely concocted & baseless,” Vikas Swarup, MEA spokesperson told ANI.
‘Surgical strike a bluff?’
According to the daily, the Pakistani authorities had been informed by its mission in Berlin that a German foreign office personnel had told them about India’s ‘fake surgical strikes’.
The newspaper quoted its source and claimed that German Ambassador to India Martin Ney and India’s foreign secretary S Jaishankar had a meeting in New Delhi, wherein ‘the Indian foreign secretary denied and said that the Indian Army did not undertake any surgical strike in PoK’.
According to the newspaper, Rukhsana Afzal, a Pakistani embassy official in Berlin visited the German foreign office in Berlin to raise the issue of ‘atrocities’ on Kashmiris in Jammu and Kashmir.
During the meeting, she also raised the issue of heightened tensions with India following the Uri terror attacks and the Indian Army’s surgical strike.
Afzal met the senior desk officer of the German office’s AfPak division Simone Stemmler and other officials from the German foreign ministry.
Soon, the newspaper quoted Stemmler confiding with the diplomat that Jaishankar in a meeting with the German ambassador said that ‘there were no surgical strikes undertaken by the Indian Army in PoK.’
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