Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday reiterated threats to deny Indus River waters to Pakistan, maintaining the neighboring nation will not get any water from rivers over which Delhi has rights.
Last month, following a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India-held Kashmir, Delhi unilaterally announced it is holding the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance, prompting swift backlash from Islamabad. India sought to link Pakistan to the attack without providing any evidence and launched missile strikes on Pakistani cities, triggering retaliatory strikes from Pakistan. Both sides then agreed to a ceasefire on May 10.
“Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price for every terrorist attack … Pakistan’s army will pay it, Pakistan’s economy will pay it,” Modi told a rally in Rajasthan.
Responding to the threat, Attorney General for Pakistan Mansoor Usman Awan told the Reuters news agency that Islamabad is willing to discuss water sharing with India but must stick to the 1960 treaty. He said India had written to Pakistan recently, citing population growth and clean energy needs as reasons to modify the treaty. However, he stressed, any discussions must take place under the terms of the treaty.
“As far as Pakistan is concerned, the treaty is very much operational, functional, and anything which India does, it does at its own cost and peril as far as the building of any hydroelectric power projects are concerned,” he added.