Deepak Kapur

New Delhi, Aug. 6: The cacophony of a breakdown in military relations across the Line of Control ricocheted here today with a Pakistani brigadier publicly questioning the Indian Army chief on familiar allegations against Islamabad.

Army chief General Deepak Kapur himself invited questions after a talk on ‘The role of the Indian Army in changing security paradigm’. The first to come out with a lengthy response was the defence adviser at the Pakistan high commission, Brigadier Mohammed Iqbal, who rubbished the charge that Pakistan was a sponsor of terrorists.

Kapur heard out the tall Iqbal and responded: “Like a good neighbour, I choose not to comment on your comments. I would only like to say that if terrorism is a threat to all of us, it is important that we should be able to join hands and take on the scourge.”

The brigadier, an infantry officer with Pakistan’s Punjab Regiment, was well within his rights to comment and question the Indian Army chief, an artillery officer — the general on the dais and the brigadier among the audience. In the India-Pakistan context, it is just as easily possible for them to be dug into bunkers or standing by gun emplacements facing each other across the fragile LoC.

Some officers accompanying Kapur said the Pakistani officer’s performance “lacked decorum”.

It was a rare sight — the jaw-jaw between the Pakistani officer and the Indian Army chief — but the encounter is symbolic of the plummeting relations between the Indian and Pakistani armies. The ceasefire was violated in the Poonch sector today, too — the seventh in two months.

The Pakistani officer was among military representatives from Japan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the US, the UK and Singapore, and senior officers of the armed forces who looked on, some with bemusement, some aghast, at the United Services Institution here.

Speaking at the event to mark the anniversary of Force, a journal on military and security issues, Kapur said the “infrastructure of terrorism” was intact in Pakistan.

Rising to comment, Iqbal counselled Kapur: “Pakistan’s contribution in the global war on terrorism is much more than any other country. Our President has been attacked, so has our Prime Minister and many of our leaders. I think the stand that Pakistan is pledging support to terrorism should be reviewed.”

The brigadier added that no evidence of the involvement of the ISI was forthcoming from India a month after the July 7 attack on the Kabul embassy.

Iqbal said later: “Thank God it (Pakistan) has not yet been blamed for what is happening in Jammu.”