ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday reaffirmed the importance of bilateral relations between Pakistan and United States for peace in Afghanistan and regional stability.
The information minister was responding to President Donald Trump’s earlier statement in which he reportedly looked forward to meeting with the “new Pakistani leadership”. Trump told his cabinet members in the same meeting that he has ended $ 1.3 billion in aid to Pakistan because “this South Asian country houses enemies”.
Chaudhry tweeted that “Pakistan’s peace is linked to Afghanistan and its prosperity and the US holds an important role in this regard. Better relations with America will supplement regional peace”.
“If the US recognises Pakistan’s significance and the sacrifices it has made in the war [against terror] and extends an olive branch then these relations are expected to improve further”, he asserted.
پاکستان کا امن افغانستان سے جڑا ہوا ہے افغانستان میں استحکام کے تناظر میں امریکہ کا کردار اہم ترین ہے۔ امریکہ سے تعلقات میںبہتری خطے کے استحکام کیلئے اہم ہے،امریکہ پاکستان کی اہمیت کو سمجھ کرجسےاس جنگ کےاثرات کو جھیلنا پڑا سامنے رکھ کر آگے بڑھےتو معاملات مزیدبہتری کی طرف جائیں گے https://t.co/UX8y9nIcDn
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) January 3, 2019
This is an interesting development as Trump and Prime Minister Imran Khan had a verbal scuffle on Twitter last November after Trump, in a TV interview, defended cutting aid to Islamabad and also suggested that Pakistani authorities knew Osama bin Laden’s location prior to his killing by US troops in a raid inside Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistan has, however, denied supporting Afghan Taliban and aiding former al Qaeda leader bin Laden.
“Instead of making Pakistan a scapegoat for their failures, the US should do a serious assessment of why, despite 140,000 NATO troops plus 250,000 Afghan troops & reportedly $1 trillion spent on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban today are stronger than before,” Khan had tweeted in response.