[IslamCity] Israel's Relationship With Pakistan Warms Thanks to America Almighty

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 16:38:46 -0700

Israel's Relationship With Pakistan Warms

By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer             (Comments in RED are Mine)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_new_friends

JERUSALEM – Israel hailed a diplomatic breakthrough Thursday with Pakistan as the first fruit of its Gaza pullout and a harbinger of warmer ties with other Muslim nations, after the first public meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries. Yet the sudden public embrace of Israel by the world's second-largest Muslim nation worried Palestinians, who warned that such a prize was premature as long as Israel controls Gaza's borders, expands West Bank settlements and tightens its hold on Jerusalem.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met publicly for the first time with Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri of Pakistan, a Muslim country that has long taken a hard line against the Jewish state, a development that both ministers linked to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip The meeting took place in the neutral site of Istanbul, Turkey. Shalom hailed the meeting as a "historic first" and said that with the Gaza withdrawal, it was "time for all of the Muslim and Arab countries to reconsider their relations with Israel."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the meeting a positive development, saying the United States was encouraging countries to establish relations with Israel.

However, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that talk of formal ties with Israel was premature. "Pakistan will not recognize Israel until the establishment of a free and independent state for the Palestinian people," he told Pakistani media. "The holding of a meeting between Pakistani and Israeli foreign ministers does not mean that we have recognized Israel. We have taken no such decision." Musharraf said Pakistan would send a delegation to Jerusalem but gave no details.

Shalom said there had been secret low-level contacts between the two countries for years but that the Gaza pullout, completed last week, created an atmosphere for more public dialogue. "This is a historic move because it could lead other Muslim, Arab countries to understand that this is the right time to do this and to move their ties with us from darkness to light," Shalom told Israeli Army Radio. "After the Gaza pullout, the time is ripe also in the eyes of the public and it is also easier at the moment to do this than it was in the past."

In an interview with Israel's Channel 2 TV, Kasuri gave the meeting a broader context — countering the image of a world battle with Islam against the background of terror attacks by extremists. "As far as the Islamic countries are concerned, and countries like Pakistan, there can be peace," he said. "We live in a global village, and all this talk about a clash of the civilizations is disastrous and suicidal."

Shalom has put a high priority on forging relations with the Islamic world, saying he hopes 10 countries from the Persian Gulf and North Africa would now set up diplomatic representations in Israel. He has not named the countries. "We saw today that this is more than wishful thinking," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mar Regev said. Israel at present has diplomatic relations with few Muslim countries: Turkey — where Thursday's meeting took place, — Jordan, Egypt, Mauritania and former Soviet republics in central Asia.

Palestinian officials insisted Arab countries should not reward Israel for emptying the Gaza settlements as long as it still controls Palestinian movement in and out of Gaza, expands West Bank settlements and is fencing off Jerusalem from the West Bank.

"Pakistan is free to do whatever it wants, and we can't impose a veto on their decision, but I hope that this step will not encourage any Arab country to normalize its relations with Israel in this period," Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath said. "We consider that any normalization of relations with Israel in this period would be an encouragement for Israel to continue its settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem."

There was no immediate comment from India, a major buyer of Israeli defense hardware and a longtime foe of Pakistan, but analysts were convinced the Israel-India alliance would be unharmed. P. Kumaraswamy, who teaches Israeli politics at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, said India may actually be relieved by a warming of Pakistan-Israel relations, which could well deflect Arab criticism of Delhi's own snug alliance with Jerusalem. "Pakistan's relationship with Israel will likely have a positive impact on India," he said, adding that was true only as long as the evolving relationship excluded defense sales. "If it takes a strategic turn, involving military deals, then India will have to (re-examine) its relations with Israel," he said.

Marvin Weinbaum of the Washington-based Middle East Institute said Pakistan was seeking to align itself further with the United States and promote itself as a force for moderation in the Islamic world. "India won't be a spoiler here in any way, there's no point in that," Weinbaum told The Associated Press. "Anything which would bring Pakistan into the international community's views on terrorism and so on, India looks at that positively."

Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the Indian subcontinent, has been gradually moving toward conciliation with Israel, despite the influence of a powerful Islamic radical party in Pakistan. The Pakistani president accepted an invitation to address an interfaith conference this month organized by the Council for World Jewry while he is in New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly.

Israeli foreign policy expert Uzi Arad said rapprochement with Pakistan should be part of a broader Israeli engagement with Asia. "The action now and in the next decade is clearly shifting toward the Asian continent," he said.

Comments – Mine

Whenever the US establishes good relations with any Muslim country top of its list of priorities is to get that country to recognize Israel. It seems that the survival of the US is dependent on the existence of Israel.

Another reason that the US wants normalizing relations between Pakistan & Israel is that Pakistan is the only Muslim country which is a nuclear power (although I don’t know how effective that would be in a direct war between Pakistan & Israel – Muslims generally are good at talking but little effective when it comes to action). If there is good relationship between the two countries that perceived threat to Israel will be automatically neutralized.

AB

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"For to us will be their return; then it will be for us to call them to account." (Holy Quran 88:25-26)

 

Copyright © 2005 by AB

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