At a time when the relationship between India and Pakistan reached an all-time low in the wake of Abu Jundal’s chilling confession, the border forces of two nations have issued a joint statement promising not to indulge in unprovoked firing.
The statement came after a marathon four-day meeting of the Border Security Force and the Pakistan Rangers here.
Addressing a joint press conference, BSF Director General U K Bansal and chief of Pakistan Rangers Major General Rizwan Akhtar said both the forces will work to ensure that such ceasefire violations do not take place along the border.
“We talked in detail (on the issue of cross border firing)...This should not happen. We will better the mechanism, we will ensure that those parameters that we have discussed here (during the meeting) will be told to every trooper on the border and we believe that we will have better results,” Akhtar said after signing a joint record of discussions.
Seconding Akhtar’s view, BSF DG Bansal said steps should be taken to ensure that ceasefire violations should not take place.
“We have existing methods of flag meetings and border talks. We will use these modalities and with the joint confidence, we both are in favour that such instances should be controlled immediately. With this mutual confidence the border commanders will deal with this issue,” Bansal said.
However, Akhtar refuted India’s claim over smuggling of fake Indian currency notes and said Pakistan was not into such kind of activities.
“No it is not correct to say that fake currency is being pumped (from across the border)...Fake currency can be made anywhere in the world...It can be manufactured in India...The maximum consumption of fake Indian currency is in India only,” he claimed.
Both the forces also talked about applying a humanitarian approach in case of people crossing the border unintentionally.