Focus on Pakistani nation, not just fighting terror: Munter

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Former US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter on Sunday said that United States is dealing with a government in Pakistan which cannot always deliver.

In an interview to CNN, Munter urged the US administration to focus on considering the fallout of their policies on the people of Pakistan.

Mr Munter is believed to have left his job because of differences with the Obama administration over its policies towards Islamabad, particularly its decision to increase drone attacks on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

While responding to a question about a $7.5 billion US aid package for Pakistan, the former envoy agreed that the programme did not achieve its targets. He said that “we didn’t get everything done that we wanted to and we should look hard at our systems programme to see where we may have failed. But I think in Pakistan, we also ran into a government that wasn’t always able to deliver.

Commenting on a recent poll that claimed that only eight percent of Pakistanis view US as a partner, whereas 74 per cent view it as an enemy, Munter said; “I think it’s very important to look at these numbers and remember that what we’re talking about is a picture the Pakistanis have of us, that they see, in terms of our security policy. There’s a part of America that the Pakistanis respect very much: our education, our business acumen, our openness and cultural side. We need to have more balance. We worked on it during my time there. I’ll be honest with you; I think we could have done a lot better. I think the Pakistanis could have done a lot better” .

Earlier, Munter told the Daily Beast that he used to receive calls from the White House to ‘dial up the pain’, and he would tell the US that Islamabad didn’t respond well to ‘dialling up the pain’. He said, look, when you’re dealing with diplomacy, you’re dealing with the idea of listening as well as talking. A diplomat will want to make sure that in addition to telling America’s story that we’re listening to the other person’s perception so we can come to some sort of agreement.”

2 COMMENTS

  1. Pakistan Government should hire Munter as its lobbyist in Washington. He understands the pain Pakistan has suffered due to American policies and knows Pakistan and its people well. He could do a great job to lobby Congress to stop all that anti Pakistan rhetoric that regularly comes out of the mouths of some Senators and Congressmen.

  2. All the $7.5 billion aid flew to corrupt army and corrupt government officials, the army knows well how to game with the people and stupid politician and un educated ignorant people. America is trying to help pakistani to get ride of Isi and cruel taliban targeting innocent people and civilians. mullah should not take part in any politics because he also did work for isi.

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