New Delhi: Following are Army Chief General Bipin Rawat’s statements in his interview to news agency PTI regarding the situation in Jammu & Kashmir:

-This is a proxy war and proxy war is a dirty war. It is played in a dirty way. The rules of engagements are there when the adversary comes face-to-face and fights with you. It is a dirty war… That is where innovation comes in. You fight a dirty war with innovations.

-People are throwing stones at us, people are throwing petrol bombs at us. If my men ask me what do we do, should I say, just wait and die? I will come with a nice coffin with a national flag and I will send your bodies home with honour. Is it what I am supposed to tell them as chief? I have to maintain the morale of my troops who are operating there.

-In fact, I wish these people, instead of throwing stones at us, were firing weapons at us. Then I would have been happy. Then I could do what I (want to do).

-Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you. We are a friendly army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us.

-As Army Chief my concern is morale of the Army. That is my job. I am far away from the battle field. I cannot influence the situation there. I can only tell the boys that I am with you. I always tell my people, things will go wrong, but if things have gone wrong and you did not have malafide intent, I am there.

-Tomorrow elections have to be held in Anantnag and similar things may happen. If the army does not respond to call for assistance, then the trust between the people whom we are protecting, police and army will break.That is something I cannot allow to happen. This is what the militants want. It can create a divide between the army and other security forces.

-Armed forces have the right of self defence and Major Gogoi could have opted for firing at the crowd but he chose not to resort to it.

-Just four districts of South Kashmir were disturbed and it was incorrect to say that entire Kashmir has gone out of control.It will have to be a composite solution. Everybody will have to get involved. Army’s role is to ensure that violence does not take place and the common man who is not indulging in this (violence) is protected.Has political initiative not been taken in the past? What was the result, you had Kargil.