Doesn't look like Pakistan is going to be focussing on AQ/taliban
matters much unless it affects internal security as badly as invading
Waziristan at the U.S.'s behest to look for the CIA's rogue operative
osama bin-laden did.
Backing US was compulsion, not choice: Kasuri
By Ahmed Hassan
<http://www.dawn.com/2006/11/04/top2.htm>
ISLAMABAD, Nov 3: Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri has said
Pakistan took the right decision to join the international war on
terrorism. Otherwise, he said, its fate would not have been different
from that of Afghanistan and Iraq.
He was speaking at a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, which was
summoned at the Parliament House on Friday mainly to discuss Monday’s
air strike on a Bajaur seminary in which more than 80 people were
killed, triggering country-wide protests and a wave of agitation in
tribal areas. The meeting was presided over by the chairman of the
committee, Mushahid Hussain Syed.
(According to Online, Mr Kasuri told the Senate committee that siding
with the US was a compulsion and not a choice as Pakistan’s
uncooperative attitude towards the US in the war against terrorism could
have landed the country in a situation similar to that Iraq.)
The foreign minister came under severe criticism for what was described
as lopsided foreign policy which, some senators said, had given the
country nothing and taken away its sovereignty and dignity.
Mr Kasuri was asked questions relating to the Bajaur incident, fate of
Northern areas and Pakistan-India talks. Some members criticised the
government for the Bajaur incident and described it as a foreign policy
failure.
Mr Kasuri said questions relating to the Bajaur operation should be
addressed to the interior and defence ministries which were responsible
for the country’s law and order situation and anti-terrorism operations,
adding that he could not say if there was any US involvement in the bombing.
Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of his own faction of the
Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), blamed the foreign policy for the loss of
so many innocent lives and termed it extra-judicial killings.
Accusing the United States of orchestrating the attack, the Maulana said
the Pakistani army could not be so cruel as to kill its own people in
such a barbaric way.
He said if the government knew that there were terrorists hiding
somewhere in the Bajaur Agency it could have sent security forces to the
area to arrest them.
He said such an extreme action would have been justified if the
militants had defied the writ of the government.
Maulana Haq rejected Mr Kasuri’s stand that had Pakistan refused to join
the US-led anti-terror war the US would have taken action.
He asked the government to demonstrate courage and stop repeating such
incidents in future.
At one point, Nisar A. Memon said that there was no mention of the
country’s foreign policy on the foreign office’s official website, which
reflected the inability of the foreign office to formulate and declare
its policy while all other government departments had projected their
policies.
Mr Kasuri admitted that Pakistan was forced to take action on its side
of the border to satisfy Afghanistan and to remove their complaints. He
said Pakistan was pursuing a policy of peaceful co-existence to subdue
the hostile attitude of the Afghan leadership.
--30--
