Pakistani ambassador, Indian advisor share perspectives on recent attacks and retaliation

Amna Nawaz:

To discuss this further now, we get two views.

First, I’m joined by Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh.

Ambassador sheik, welcome to the “News Hour.” Thank you for joining us.

We saw Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif call those Indian strikes a blatant act of war. He promised retaliation. Give us Pakistan’s view at this moment. What could that retaliation look like?

Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States: Thank you, Amna, for having me at this show.

As you have mentioned, that the prime minister of Pakistan called it a blatant act of aggression. That’s what exactly it was, because it was conducted without affording any evidence of the incident that took place in the Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in Pahalgam.

So it was presumptuous pretext on which this aggression was conducted, without affording evidence and also without accepting Pakistan’s well-intended offer of conducting an impartial, neutral inquiry into the incident, investigation to the incident, which was generally welcomed and supported by the international community.

So Pakistan yesterday acted in self-defense. And we, as you have seen and mentioned, downed five Indian fighter jets, three of them Rafale, SU-30, and then, of course, the MiG 29 as well.