China on Monday urged India and Pakistan to ‘exercise restraint’ as the two countries reportedly exchanged fire at the Line of Control for a fourth night in a row in the wake of a deadly attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam, reports DAWN.com.
The April 22 attack killed 26 people, mostly tourists, and was one of the deadliest armed attacks in the disputed Himalayan region since 2000. Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, said it ‘unequivocally’ denied involvement in the attack, after an initial message that claimed responsibility.
India, without offering any evidence, has implied cross-border linkages of the attackers, while Pakistan has strongly denied any involvement. Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has called for a neutral probe into the incident.
‘China hopes that the two sides will exercise restraint, meet each other halfway, properly handle relevant differences through dialogue and consultation and jointly maintain regional peace and stability,’ foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.
‘China welcomes all measures that will help cool down the situation,’ Jiakun told a regular press briefing.
The statement came after Pakistan and India reportedly exchanged gunfire for a fourth night in a row across the LoC, after four years of relative calm.
On Thursday, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi vowed to pursue the attackers to the ‘ends of the earth’ and said that those who planned and carried out the attack ‘will be punished beyond their imagination’.
Calls have also grown from Indian politicians and others for military action against Pakistan.
Defence minister Khawaja Asif on Friday said Pakistan was ‘ready to cooperate’ in an international probe into the Pahalgam attack, but also warned of an ‘all-out war’ if India carried out any attack on Pakistan.
The United Nations has urged the arch-rivals to show ‘maximum restraint’ so that issues can be ‘resolved peacefully through meaningful mutual engagement’.
US in touch with India and Pakistan, urges work toward ‘responsible solution’
China’s call for restraint added to the United States’ statement from Sunday, urging India and Pakistan to work towards what it called a ‘responsible solution’, as Washington said it was in touch with both countries.
‘This is an evolving situation and we are monitoring developments closely. We have been in touch with the governments of India and Pakistan at multiple levels,’ a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.
‘The United States encourages all parties to work together towards a responsible resolution,’ the spokesperson added.
The State Department spokesperson also said Washington ‘stands with India and strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Pahalgam’, reiterating comments similar to recent ones made by US president Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance.
In public, the US government has expressed support for India after the attack but has not criticised Pakistan. While Saudi Arabia and Iran have offered to mediate, Trump last week said he was confident that India and Pakistan would ‘get it figured out’.
India is an increasingly important US partner as Washington aims to counter China’s rising influence in Asia while Pakistan remains a US ally, even as its importance for Washington has diminished after the 2021 US withdrawal from neighbouring Afghanistan.
Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based South Asia analyst and writer for the Foreign Policy magazine, said India is now a much closer US partner than Pakistan.
‘This may worry Islamabad that if India retaliates militarily, the US may sympathise with its counterterrorism imperatives and not try to stand in the way,’ Kugelman told Reuters.
Kugelman also said that given Washington’s involvement and on-going diplomatic efforts in Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, the Trump administration is ‘dealing with a lot on its global plate’ and may leave India and Pakistan on their own, at least in the early days of the tensions.
Hussain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, also said that there seemed to be no US appetite to calm the situation at this moment.
