Zardari optimistic about ties with US

President Asif Ali Zardari has expressed confidence over Pakistan’s relationship with the United States despite recent complaints from Washington.
“I think the US is an important country in the world and so is Pakistan. We have mutual interests,” Zardari said in an interview with a Chinese daily in Beijing. “Slowly but surely, the relations we will get back to normal,” the president said. Asked about his opinion on US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s remarks about Pakistan, Zardari said, “I think sometimes politicians speak for political reasons. It is an elections year in the US. Most of the comments coming from the US are based on their international political condition.”
He said nobody understood the effects of the war on Pakistan. “We have lost 40,000 people. We are victims of terror … It seems Pakistan is abetting terrorists but it is the wrong perception,” the president said. Zardari was in Beijing to attend a two-day Shanghai Cooperation Conference (SCO) where Pakistan is taking part in the conference as observer along with Afghanistan, Iran and Mangolia.
The bloc reached several landmark agreements on political, economic and security cooperation during the SCO Beijing summit, which also set the blueprint for the bloc’s future. The SCO is going to be the region’s economic engine in the future, Zardari said, adding that he has “high expectations” from the organisation. “The SCO is very young, and obviously it is taking its own time to grow. But it shows the world that this is the path we are taking,” he said. “Today, the economic and financial stability of nations is the way forward. In this way, the region can benefit from each others’ strengths and come to the aid of each others’ weaknesses,” he said.