The Foreign Office (FO) on Tuesday rejected the claim made by India that Pakistan had attempted to attack the Golden Temple in Amritsar \u2014 one of the holiest sites in Sikhism \u2014 during the recent tensions with the neighbouring country. New Delhi had accused Islamabad, without evidence, of orchestrating last month\u2019s deadly attack in occupied Kashmir\u2019s Pahalgam. Pakistan had strongly denied the allegations and called for a neutral probe. As the situation turned into a military confrontation between the nuclear powers, it took American intervention for both sides to agree to a ceasefire. A day earlier, the Indian army claimed that Pakistan had attempted to target the Golden Temple and the attacks were \u201csuccessfully thwarted\u201d, The Hindu reported. The management of the temple was allowed to deploy guns to \u201ccounter potential drone and missile threats from Pakistan\u201d, a senior army official told ANI. He was quoted as saying, \u201cFortunately, we visualised what they [Pakistan] were capable of doing \u2026 They were more interested in creating confusion, chaos internally, and hence, we visualised that they would target our civil population and our religious places of worship.\u201d In a statement today, FO spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said, \u201cWe categorically reject the allegations that Pakistan attempted to target the Golden Temple, the most revered place in the Sikh faith. \u201cWe hold all places of worship in the highest esteem and cannot think of targeting a holy site like the Golden Temple.\u201d He said that India had targeted different places of worship in Pakistan on May 6-7, adding that the allegations \u201ccannot shift attention from this unacceptable act\u201d. The statement further said, \u201cPakistan is the proud custodian of many holy sites of the Sikh faith. Every year, it welcomes thousands of Sikh pilgrims from across the world.\u201d He highlighted that the country provides visa-free access to the Gurdwara Sahib Kartarpur through the Kartarpur Corridor. \u201cIn that backdrop, any claim concerning Pakistan\u2019s attempt to target the Golden Temple is absolutely baseless and incorrect,\u201d it added. On Monday, the FO spokesperson dismissed reports of the Indian media claiming that Pakistan had used nuclear-capable Shaheen missiles. He said that the Indian army deleted the \u201cmisleading video\u201d after realising that the claim was \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d. \u201cThese fabricated stories align with New Delhi\u2019s ongoing efforts to promote a misleading narrative regarding the ceasefire and baseless allegations of so-called \u2018nuclear blackmail\u2019 by Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Foreign Office (FO) on Tuesday rejected the claim made by India that Pakistan had attempted to attack the Golden Temple in Amritsar \u2014 one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24647,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}