Pakistan’s Attorney General Ashtar Ausaf has said that the country would give a robust reply in a forceful manner at the public hearing on the conviction of suspected Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, Dawn reported on Saturday. The International Court of Justice will hear India’s appeal against the former Indian Navy officer’s death sentence on Monday.

“We have sent our recommendations to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Office,” Ausaf told the Pakistani newspaper on Friday. The recommendations were sent after a two-day meeting on the matter. The meeting was attended senior officials of the Nawaz Sharif government.

While Ausuf is likely to lead the Pakistan side in the case, he said they might also get someone from abroad to argue the case for them.

On Wednesday, Islamabad said that it would review the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, a day after The Hague court issued a stay order on Jadhav’s death sentence. A Pakistani military court had sentenced Jadhav to death on espionage charges.

Islamabad had earlier accused Delhi of resorting to diversionary tactics with its appeal to the ICJ against Jadhav’s execution. The ICJ’’s ruling is binding on Pakistan, lawyer Harish Salve told NDTV.

In its appeal to the international court, India had accused Pakistan of “egregious violations of the Vienna Convention on consular access”. Delhi had pointed out “the extreme gravity and immediacy of the threat that authorities in Pakistan will execute an Indian citizen in violation of obligations Pakistan owes to India”. It had urged the court to deliver an order seeking provisional measures immediately, “without waiting for an oral hearing”.