India Downgrades Diplomatic Ties with Pakistan After Deadly Kashmir Attack
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - India has summoned Pakistan’s top diplomat and announced a series of punitive measures, including suspending a key water treaty and reducing embassy staff, following a deadly militant attack in Kashmir that left 26 civilians dead.
India summoned the senior Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi on Thursday, local media reported, a day after announcing steps to scale back relations with Islamabad amid escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
The measures follow Tuesday’s attack in Kashmir, where suspected militants killed 26 men at a tourist destination in the deadliest assault on civilians in India in nearly 20 years.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the assault had cross-border involvement.
He added that New Delhi would suspend the six-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty and shut the only land crossing with Pakistan.
India will also withdraw its defense attachés from Pakistan and reduce staff at its embassy in Islamabad from 55 to 30, Misri said.
Local media reported that the Pakistani envoy was summoned to inform him that all defense advisers in the Pakistan mission had been declared persona non grata and given one week to leave.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has convened an all-party meeting on Thursday to brief opposition leaders on the government’s response to the attack.
In Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was expected to chair a National Security Committee meeting to determine Pakistan’s response, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar wrote on social media platform X.
The Indus Waters Treaty, brokered by the World Bank, had historically divided the waters of the Indus River and its tributaries between the two countries and had endured through previous conflicts.
India will place the treaty in abeyance, Misri confirmed.
Diplomatic ties between India and Pakistan were already strained before the latest crisis.
Pakistan expelled India’s envoy and declined to appoint its own ambassador to New Delhi after India revoked the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019.
Tuesday’s attack is widely seen as a blow to Prime Minister Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims that revoking Kashmir’s special status had brought peace and progress to the region.
Security officials and survivors said the militants separated men from women and children before asking the men their names and shooting them at close range.
At the time of the attack, about 1,000 tourists and 300 local workers were in the Baisaran Valley, known as “mini Switzerland” for its scenic meadows and dense pine forests.
The assault was the deadliest in India in almost two decades.
