Russian President Vladimir Putin has seemingly started calling the shots, thanks to his recent win in the Middle East crisis. His firm stand against the US vow to attack Syria and the threat to attack Saudi Arabia instead worked well. Saudi Prince Bandar’s reported meeting with President Putin that led to Moscow moving its war ships to the Mediterranean is one of the reasons of Riyadh’s frustration, which was reflected in its rejection of UN Security Council’s non-permanent seat offer. But both the occasions India has managed to cleverly hijack; first at the UN during the General Assembly’s annual meet where it succeeded in keeping at bay Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Manmohan Singh met President Obama in Washington right at the time of NS’ address to the GA. So much so the session was said to be hijacked by two personalities: one was Bill Gates and the other was Malala. But thanks to Secretary Kerry, who timely stepped in, bestowed an audience upon NS and announced his meeting with President Obama for the last week of this month. Whatever comes out from it is matter of days, but the Indians, yet again, very cleverly coincided it with MS’s meeting with President Putin in Moscow with the latter’s win over Obama keeping in mind. Putin has reportedly played smart again as the MS has failed to strike a nuclear deal with Moscow’s ‘mystery’ man.
MS is also visiting China in a bid to forge closer economic relations and ink a pact to ease tension along their disputed border. While the US has quietly ordered release of $1.6 billion military and civilian assistance to Pakistan, and ahead of NS’s meeting with the US president, Obama called upon the Congress to revive the assistance to Pakistan worth $300 million “so that the Pakistan-US relations could be put in full gear”. However analysts see New Delhi’s move ahead of time as compared to Islamabad’s lacking vision. In the changing paradigms, ahead of US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, Pakistan has to move clear-headedly before making any further commitments on changes at top levels and shift in the anti-terror policy much only to appease a ‘weakening’ ally. Pakistan needs to tread carefully.
F Z KHAN
Islamabad