ISLAMABAD, Nov 29: The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, on Friday said that troops on both sides of the Pakistani and the Indian borders are rapidly disengaging after about a year-long eyeball-to-eyeball deployment.

“The potential threat of war is over but our army and air force personnel still man various important forward positions to deter any possible threat,” he said.

Talking to Dawn at an Iftar dinner, hosted by the chairman of the Pakistan Ordinance Factories (POF), Lt. Gen. Abdul Qayyum, the air chief said there had been many occasions when the threat of war was imminent between the two countries.

“The potential threat of a major armed conflict was averted between May and July this year, when the situation had turned very serious. But then better sense prevailed,” he said, referring to the deployment of about one-million-strong troops along the borders by both the countries after an attack on the Indian parliament in December, which The New Delhi government had attributed to Pakistan-based militants.

The air chief said that India had to bear a tremendous financial cost for deploying a huge number of its troops along Pakistani borders.

“We, too, will have to bear some financial cost of taking our troops close to the Indian border, but you just cannot imagine how much they (Indians) will have to spend on this withdrawal exercise,” said the air chief.

Air Chief Marshal Mir paid tribute to Pakistan’s armed forces for having bravely faced what he termed an “imminent threat of war in the recent months”.

The air force, he said, was actively providing vital support and supplementing the efforts of the army and the navy to protect the motherland.

He said that the Pakistani air force had played a vital role in deterring the Indians from attacking Pakistan during the past few months.

He said that there had been a talk of nuclear war between the two countries and the issue had also been highlighted in the domestic as well as the foreign media.

Discounting the possibility of a nuclear war between the two countries, he said that Pakistan had the deterrence “but then there is no doubt ... that both Pakistan and India narrowly escaped a very serious outbreak of war.”

Pakistan, the air chief said, did not harbour aggressive designs against any country but it was fully prepared to defend its territorial integrity.

Pakistan’s preponderance about peace in the region, he said should not be construed as a sign of weakness on its part, adding: “We are not for war but then we cannot ignore our defence requirements.”

Pakistani armed forces, he said, had an edge when it came to their superior training and their capability to carry out crippling strikes against any possible aggressor.

“We must repose confidence and trust on our forces.”