The participants of a roundtable conference urged Pakistan to follow the Chinese model for its domestic and foreign policies which were not only characterised by domestic economic development alone but also by an uncompromising and principled stance on core foreign policy issues. The discussion organised by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) on Wednesday called for a foreign policy reflective of Pakistan’s domestic realities. Ambassador B A Malik, a foreign policy analyst, was the main speaker at the event. He said foreign policy was dependent on the domestic situation of any country and that the domestic situation of Pakistan demanded greater regional integration for the prosperity of its people.
Ambassador Malik appreciated President Zardari’s statement about developing global trade relations and said, “There is no room for exceptions in the foreign policy.”
According to the ambassador the late Benazir Bhutto’s foreign policy stated that lack of progress on one issue on the agenda should not impede the progress on others. He maintained that regional trade and commerce was the way forward for Pakistan. “It is not an age of independence, it is an age of interdependence,” he said. He called on Pakistan’s political leadership to evolve a consensus on the foreign policy that would break the status quo. Ambassador Khalid Mahmood added that Pakistan would have to combine the security and economic development aspects of the foreign policy.
Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) Department of International Relations’ Dr Mavara Inayat called for learning regional integration from the example of the European Union (EU). Agreeing with her, Pierre Mayaudon, deputy head of the EU delegation to Pakistan, argued that there was a greater need for Pakistan’s foreign policy paradigm to reflect its economic needs including international trading relationships.
Shabana Fayyaz from QAU Department of Defence and Strategic Studies said it was necessary to reduce the gap between the foreign policy pronouncements of the political leaders and their actual implementation.
U.S. Embassy Deputy Political Consular Constancy Arvis said: “Though the problem of terrorism had implications beyond Pakistan’s borders, countries like the U S had a serious interest in it. The war on terror was also in the interest of Pakistan to secure a peaceful future for it.”
Defence Analyst Lt-Gen (retd) Asad Durrani said: “Friendly relations with all the countries of the world could be a foreign policy goal but not the policy itself, because a comprehensive foreign policy needs to cope with both threats and opportunities.”
