Pakistan changes tune again: 'Ceasefire with India won't hold if IWT issue not resolved'

A dam on the Indus river system in Reasi, Jammu and Kashmir. (PTI)

Having virtually pleaded India to halt its military operations after India struck a number of Pakistan's key military installations at multiple locations, Pakistan Foreign minister Ishaq Da on Tuesday said that the "ceasefire" between the two countries could be threatened if the "water issue" is not resolved in the upcoming talks.

Failure to resolve the water issue “will amount to an act of war,” he said in an interview with CNN on Monday, referring to India's decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty.

The Pakistan FM's concerns over water come after India put the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. India's action came a day after the deadly terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam hat killed 26 civilians. India has made it clear that the treaty shall remain in abeyance until Pakistan takes credible and irreversible steps to end its support for cross-border terrorism.

The Pakistan FM's remarks came on a day Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it crystal clear that "blood and water cannot flow together", reasserting what the Ministry of External Affairs had already clarified about no change in the IWT suspension despite the halt in military operations.

Notably, the Pakistan FM has also refused any direct talks between the DGMOs of the two countries and also said that Pakistan did not consider deploying nuclear warheads to strike India.

The remarks come amid multiple falsehoods being floated by Pakistan that have been emphatically called out by India. On Monday, India fact-checked the Pakistan Army which claimed that India had killed Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a cleric and not Jaish-e-Muhammad's Abdul Rauf Azhar, a UN-sanctioned terrorist, as the latter had claimed.

Prime Minister Modi said on Monday that India has "only paused our responsive attack on Pakistan’s terror and military hubs.”

“Operation Sindoor has drawn a new line under the fight against terrorism – this is a new phase, a new normal,” he said in an address to the nation.

“If there is a terror attack on India, we will give a jaw-breaking response. India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail,” PM Modi cautioned and claimed that the ferocity of his country’s attacks pushed Pakistan to look for “ways to save themselves” by reaching a ceasefire deal.

“They were calling the world to reduce tensions after being completely destroyed,” he said.

The treaty, signed after nine years of talks between the two nations with the World Bank’s assistance, governs the sharing of waters from six rivers. Under the agreement, Pakistan controls the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—while India uses the eastern rivers—Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. India is allowed 20% of the water from the western rivers.

World Bank president Ajay Banga, who visited India last week, said on Thursday that hat the World Bank’s role is limited to that of a facilitator, and it will not step in to resolve the current dispute.

“We have no role to play beyond a facilitator. There’s a lot of speculation in the media about how the World Bank will step in and fix the problem but it’s all bunk. The World Bank’s role is merely as a facilitator,” Banga said, according to a statement issued by the Press Information Bureau.