Partnership, not pressure

Pakistan warned the United States on Friday to keep its cool and cautioned that it risked losing an ally if it continued to accuse Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against militancy.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said Pakistan wanted good relations with the US but not at the cost of its safety. He said Pakistan was a supporter of an independent and sovereign Afghanistan, and it would be best not to create any misunderstandings. “We have good relations with our neighbours. A sovereign, independent and prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s interest,” he said.
He said further that the US should be mindful of the feelings of the 180 million people of Pakistan while issuing statements or commenting on important issues. “Our request to US would be that it should keep political space for us so that we can communicate their political importance to our people,” he said. “Our 180 million people know how to defend their motherland and its sovereignty,” he added.
WITH OR WITHOUT US: He said the Obama administration should increase contacts with Pakistan in order to remove misunderstandings if it wished to retain Islamabad as a strategic ally. The PM said the message for the US was that it “cannot live with us, it cannot live without us”. “So, I will say to them that when they can’t live without us, they should increase contacts to end misunderstandings with us,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a function at the Karachi Port Trust.
KHAR: Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar categorically told the US it risked losing an ally. “We have also conveyed this to the US that you will lose an ally. You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so it will be at their own cost,” said Khar. Khar, who became foreign minister only two months ago and has attracted wide attention for her relative youth, condemned the allegations as humiliating.
“Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it, is not acceptable,” she said in New York, where she has been attending the UN General Assembly. “At the operational level it will be appropriate to say that there are serious difficulties (between the two countries),” Khar said. In a separate interview with India’s NDTV, Khar added: “Pointing fingers at each other will not help. Finding scapegoats will not help… We want to be a mature, responsible country that is fighting terrorism with a lot of maturity.”
Khar also said that because of international pressure over safety of its nuclear weapons, Pakistan had taken steps to augment their security as it shares concerns that “non-state actors or terrorists” may acquire and use them. Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar also rejected the US accusations and said there would not have been an attack on a Pakistani naval base if there were any contacts between the security establishment and the Haqqani network.
“Taliban could not have attacked our GoC if we had any links with them,” the defence minister told reporters after ASF exercises in Karachi. Mukhtar said the US allegations were contradictory to reality. “At this time, it is difficult for America to move away from Pakistan and we too need them… We have had a relationship with them since the 1940s and do not want to end that,” he said.
The defence minister said if the US prepared a proper mechanism for action against terrorists, Pakistan could join ranks with the US for a targeted operation. He said if the US had any information pertaining to the Haqqani network, it should share it with Pakistan so the country’s authorities could act on it. He said that Pakistan, a sovereign state, could not be bullied into situations.
To a question, he said had the Americans taken Pakistanis into confidence over the Abbottabad operation, the situation would have been different today.