NEW DELHI, DEC 20
A high-level assessment of the security scenario in the light of Indo-Pak tensions was undertaken at a marathon meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Defence Ministry here tonight.
Three senior-most Ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, A K Antony and P Chidambaram, besides National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, three services chiefs and intelligence chiefs attended in the meeting, which lasted around four hours. There was no media briefing on it.
Meanwhile, the army is understood to have cancelled leave to its personnel till April.
Singh drove from his residence to the South Block housing the Defence Ministry for the crucial meeting.
The meeting comes against the backdrop of a new low in ties with Pakistan, which is not seen as actively cooperating with India in bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks trained from their soil.
Meanwhile, the international intelligence community believes that India will likely attack PoK or elsewhere in Pakistan to settle scores for the multiple November 26 Mumbai attacks.
Mukherjee’s statement, on Friday, at an international conference in Gangtok, Sikkim appears to have lent credence to this suspicion of the global intelligence community.
At the conference Mukherjee said, “If a country cannot keep the assurances that it has given, then it obliges us to consider the entire range of options that exist to protect our interests and people from this menace.”
The suspicion of an Indian attack on Pakistan was raised by Stratfor, a US based private intelligence service provider.
In its latest intelligence forecast, Stratfor said, “Indian military operations against targets in Pakistan have in fact been prepared and await the signal to go forward.”
Stratfor said, unlike the massive troop mobilisation after the Parliament attack in 2002, this time, India’s war preparations are clouded in secrecy and so are invisible.
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