News
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Drone strikes are ‘unjustified’: Khar
* Foreign minister says Pakistan’s foreign policy aimed at achieving peace in region
PERTH: Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said on Saturday that the US drone attacks inside Pakistani territory were “unjustified”, adding that they were counterproductive and created problems in garnering support against extremists.
“Our leadership has always condemned these in the strongest terms,” Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told students at a lecture at the University of Western Australia organised by the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Khar, who is in Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), spoke on the challenges Pakistan was facing after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the way it was dealing with them. She rejected that Pakistan was indulging in a double game as alleged by the BBC, since it had sacrificed many precious lives in the war against terror.
“Were we not sincere, why would terrorists and extremists be targeting our people and security forces?” she asked. “We have lost 30,000 people including 6,500 personnel of the security forces. Our financial losses are running in the billions,” she told the students. “Yet we are still being blamed for terrorism.”
She claimed that the fight against the terrorists was taking place in the backdrop of a complex and uncertain regional situation.
“This is a fight we have to do for our own survival,” she said, and added that the terrorists wanted to destroy the social fabric of Pakistani society.
She dwelt at length about the reasons leading to the creation of extremists and terrorists and attributed it to the vacuum created after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988. She said that Pakistan was still hosting around 3.5 million Afghan refugees.
Khar said that Islam was the most maligned and misinterpreted religion of the modern world, claiming it was being viewed opposite to what it really preached.
She focused on the way Pakistan was being perceived by the world today and said that the nation was resilient and determined to rise above all challenges.
“We had seen some of the world’s worst natural disasters like the earthquake of 2005 and the floods of 2010 and 2011, yet we managed to bounce back.”
The foreign minister, in her lecture at the Centre for Muslim States and Societies of the University, covered wide-ranging issues including the role of women in all spheres of life in Pakistan and the challenges the country was confronting, particularly in the wake of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and its impact on Pakistan. appCourtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk