US leading de-escalation efforts in Pak-India conflict: Asif

ISLAMABAD: The United States is leading global efforts to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Reuters on Thursday.India’s drone incursions into Pakistan made Pakistan’s further retaliation “increasingly certain”, Asif said. Pakistan said it shot down 25 drones from India.World powers from the US to Russia and China have called for calm in one of the world’s most dangerous, and most populated, nuclear flashpoint regions. “The most prominent in this lot is the United States of America, because president Trump has openly advocated peace and de-escalation of (the) situation in (the) subcontinent,” he said. “We will not hit the civilian population, not at all. We will refrain from that, but we will definitely hit their military installations...,” he said, adding: “Military installations, their bases, their forward positions on all the three control line, working boundary and international boundary.”