To the dismay of Pakistani diplomats, the US administration is not willing for a top-level meeting between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting next month in New York to discuss and iron out serious differences between the two major allied nations in anti-terrorism global campaign.
Prime Minister Gilani will represent Pakistan in the UN General Assembly’s session and he is likely to visit New York in the third week of September for the purpose. It is customary that the heads of state and governments also have bilateral interactions on the sidelines of UN General Assembly’s session every year, hence Pakistan’s tries for a meeting between Gilani and Obama.
Pakistani authorities believe the top-level Pakistan-US meeting could facilitate the reconciliatory efforts and do away with the differences over a host of issues such as the CIA network in Pakistan, suspension of US military assistance to Islamabad, withdrawal of American military trainers etc.
Owing to intervention by US Senator John McCain, who recently visited Islamabad to meet Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership as well as hectic efforts by US Ambassador Cameron Munter, Islamabad and Washington have been able to resolve one contentious issue, that of travel restrictions imposed by the Foreign Office on American diplomats, but still a lot is needed to be done to resolve the other issues.
“The US administration has not shown any interest so far in the top level meeting between Gilani and Obama and its because of the unsuccessful reconciliatory efforts being made from the two sides to iron out the differences and restore the normal relations,” a diplomatic source said on Sunday.
He said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would, however, call on Gilani during the UN General Assembly’s session and discuss with him various bilateral, regional and global issues with focus on the ongoing diplomatic row between Islamabad and Washington and ways settle it.
When contacted, a Pakistani official said, “No doubt the differences between Islamabad and Washington are of serious nature but the more alarming thing is the prevailing ‘inertia’ in the two capitals on the political side to settle the conflicting matters.”
“Now if there is a meeting between Prime Minister Gilani and President Obama, which is so far not imminent, it will help a lot in breaking that inertia. We see some contacts between the two sides at the military level and also between the two major spy agencies, the ISI and the CIA in recent past but the civilian leaders from the two sides need to also put in their efforts to resolve the row between the two states,” he said.