NEW YORK: Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi said on Friday that the country does not get pressurised by threats from the United States.
She was referring to the US threats on the issue of UN resolution on Jerusalem.
Lodhi said that the stance of America and Israel had not gained popularity in the rest of the world, adding that the whole world is on one side whereas the US and Israel are on the other.
Lodhi also told the UN Security Council during a discussion on the security situation in Afghanistan that there are no ‘safe havens’ in Pakistan. Lodhi told the Security Council that peace will not be restored by the continuing resort to military force.
Indeed, it is evident after years of war, that neither Kabul and the coalition, nor the Afghan Taliban, can impose a military solution on each other, she said. “The promotion of a political settlement and the pursuit of a military solution are mutually incompatible. You cannot kill and talk at the same time. Another resort to the military option will not produce a result different from the past. It will not break the impasse much less yield a political solution,” she remarked.
Lodhi said 16 years of war, waged by the world’s most powerful forces against an insurgency of irregulars, has not yielded a military solution. This failure cannot be explained away by alleging the existence of safe havens for the insurgency across the border, she said. “Apart from the conflict between the Afghan government and the Taliban-led insurgency, a new and vicious threat has emerged in Afghanistan: the presence of a conglomerate of terrorists from various parts of the world: the TIP, ETIM; IMU and other groups which have all now adopted the umbrella ofDaesh,” she said.
“These terrorists are now located in the 40 percent of Afghan territory which, according to a recent US Pentagon report is either out of Kabul’s control or is contested. It appears that Daesh’s “core”, under pressure in Iraq and Syria, may be relocating to these ungoverned spaces in Afghanistan,” Lodhi said. Observing that securing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and preventing cross-border terrorism is essential for both countries, Lodhi said this can be achieved only through constant vigilance, effective management, and real-time communication. Terrorists should not be allowed to provoke clashes between our border security forces, she said.
United States Vice-President Mike Pence, during his unannounced visit to Afghanistan, had also reiterated Trump’s warning that Pakistan must stop providing ‘safe havens’ to terrorist groups fighting US troops and their Afghan allies.
“President Trump has put Pakistan on notice,” Pence had said. He also said that Pakistan has ‘much to lose’ if the country keeps providing ‘safe havens’ to criminals and terrorists. ‘
More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.