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FO says Pakistan wants peace in neighbourhood
By Sardar Sikander ShaheenISLAMABAD: While the ice of hostility melted between India and Pakistan with two premiers coming together to exchange cordial gestures at the 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit, the diplomatic authorities in the federal capital linked the normalisation of ties with neighbours to the basis of equality.
The development followed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif shaking hands and exchanging smiles with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi amid warm applause from the SAARC leaders at the second and final day of the summit in Kathmandu, Nepal, after exchange of cold shoulders the previous day.
“Good neighbourly ties have to be on the basis of equality,” Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said on Thursday.
“We want peace in the neighbourhood, peace for development. All the countries in this region confront the problem of poverty. We need to focus on our internal economic stability and development,” the FO spokesperson responded to a query, with questions on Pakistan-India relations dominating the media briefing.
She denied the impression that Pakistan did not follow its “policy of good relations with the neighbours” and was left out in the summit. “The prime minister has had interactions with six SAARC leaders. I do not see how Pakistan is isolated,” she said.
Answering a question regarding pending agreements in the SAARC Summit, the FO spokesperson said that the agreements were not signed (as of Thursday noon) because Pakistan’s “internal procedures” were not completed.
“Pakistan is not the only country that has not completed its internal procedures with regard to the two agreements. There are other SAARC members as well. We understand that the reports of the experts group were supposed to be submitted to the ministers concerned to meet the procedural requirements. And we have already indicated to the host secretariat that the procedures had not been completed,” she added.
On the allegations levelled by Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh that Pakistan was sheltering Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian underworld don, somewhere at Pak-Afghan border, Tasnim Aslam said, “It is not necessary to always respond to irresponsible rhetoric.”
Either, she did not subscribe to the perception that the relationship between Islamabad and Dhaka was also on a tense side. “As a fellow Muslim and SAARC country, we have the best wishes for peace, prosperity of the people of Bangladesh. We struggled together for independence,” she added.
On the extension of the deadline on a crucial nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of permanent members of the Security Council the FO representative said, “Naturally, everyone would have liked to see the closure of this issue through an agreement before the deadline of November 24. This has not happened but we are happy to see that negotiations would continue and additional seven months have been given to complete the negotiations.”
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk