Foreign Defending Pakistan’s position
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi has clarified Pakistan’s policy regarding Afghanistan and India, while emphasizing the importance of improving Pak-US relations. On the sidelines of the ongoing UNGA session he has met a number of foreign dignitaries besides giving an interview to Al-Jazeera and joining a discussion at Asia Society, a global NGO that works for forging closer ties between Asia and the West.
Pakistan’s differences with the US were originally limited to what Washington considered Pakistan’s inaction against Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network allegedly operating from Pakistan’s territory. As Alice Wells has now put it these groups are still active and they need to be eliminated. The freedom enjoyed by certain other terrorist groups included in the UN sanctions list has of late also become a part of the US grievances. The failure to choke the funding of these groups led FATF to place Pakistan on the grey list. Even some of Pakistan’ closest allies found it difficult to support Pakistan’s position
The recurrence of terrorist incidents fatefully synchronizing with peace moves have in the past scuttled successive Pak-India attempts to resolve their outstanding issues. The recent initiative by Imran Khan failed however on account of Modi’s need to maintain anti-Pakistan hype in India in order to ensure that the Hindu nationalist lobby remains firmly behind Modi during the forthcoming Indian elections.
The Pak-Afghan relations have begun to improve, thanks the Chinese help, though the issue of Afghan Taliban continuing to use Pakistan’s territory to launch attacks inside Afghanistan still remains a bone of contention, as remarks by Abdullah Abdullah at the Council of Foreign Relations on Wednesday indicate.
The COAS has held three detailed meetings with Imran Khan. The newly elected Prime Minister has also attended briefings at the GHQ and ISI headquarters; the former spread over eight hours. Having received the inputs the elected Prime Minister should be given free hand to formulate policies that he considers are in the best interest of the country. He should then get them endorsed by Parliament. If politicians are required to defend certain policies they should also be allowed to formulate them.
