By Aarti Tikoo Singh
New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had offered to evacuate Pakistani students from China’s Wuhan city hit by novel Coronavirus but Prime Minister Imran Khan failed to respond to his humanitarian gesture.
Top sources told IANS that Modi made the offer soon after India decided to evacuate around 640 Indian nationals from Wuhan which has been placed under a lockdown due to the outbreak of 2019-nCoV. The epidemic has killed around 650 people and infected over 30,000 in China.
The thinking in New Delhi was that it was a humanitarian cause, sources said. However due to “hullabaloo in Pakistan”, Prime Minister Khan failed to respond to the offer, a top source said.
In the end, India evacuated seven Maldivian students at the request of the Ibrahim Mohamad Solih government along with Indian students.
Khan has been traveling around the world, campaigning against India over Kashmir ever since the Modi government reorganised the state of Jammu and Kashmir and revoked its special status in the Indian Constitution on August 5. Pakistan has attempted to invade Kashmir four times since 1947 and has been sponsoring an Islamist militancy and cross-border terror in Kashmir for the last three decades.
Sources in Islamabad said that Pakistan Army is already infuriated with Khan because of his inaction and failed diplomacy over Kashmir since the international community has not paid any attention to his rhetoric on the issue.
An ailing economy, along with pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, a global watchdog of terror funding, has prevented Pakistan from making any impact on the Kashmir issue even as Khan has spent most of his time seeking allies.
Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Muslim world, has also declined Khan’s plea to hold a discussion on Kashmir at the level of council of foreign ministers in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The Pakistani Army, sources said, are not pleased with Khan’s diplomatic efforts which have yielded no results in Pakistan’s favour.
