Pakistan has sought to virtually complain to the United States that it is not adequately pressuring India on issues of “legitimate concern” to Islamabad (read Kashmir).
“There is a strong perception in Pakistan that while a lot of pressure is exerted on Pakistan on issues of concern to India, our legitimate concerns are not conveyed to India with the same intensity,” Pakistan PM’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz put it to US Secretary of State John Kerry as the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue got underway here on Monday.
“The overwhelming majority of the people in Pakistan support the normalisation of our relations with India and believe that the resolution of the Kashmir dispute would result in achieving this goal,” Aziz said, asserting: “The (Pakistani) Prime Minister’s bold vision of normalising relations with India is being pursued with full commitment.”
A joint statement issued after the daylong deliberations, however, steered clear of any references to Indo-Pak matters, save for the US welcoming “steps taken by Pakistan and India to improve their relations”, with a recognition of “the potential for enhanced stability and prosperity from improved bilateral relations”.
At the high-level dialogueafter a gap of three years, Aziz also called upon the US to transform its “transactional relationship” with Pakistan into one of “strategic partnership”.
Asking Washington not to look at Islamabad “from the two specific lenses of Afghanistan and terrorism”, he said these US concerns “must be balanced by giving due importance to Pakistan’s own security concerns” on a long-term basis.
Aziz also demanded restoration of mutual trust at all levels and among all key institutions, commenting: “Once this trust is restored, then any unexpected incident or accident or disagreement on a policy or a tactic will not be able to derail the relationship, as happened in 2011 and 2012.”
Kerry, in his remarks, sought to please the Pakistanis by endorsing the plan announced by the Nawaz Sharif Government to turn their country into a future economic tiger.
“The US has no doubt that Sharif’s policies will put Pakistan on a path towards a more prosperous future, and we fully support his goal of making Pakistan’s marketplace a tiger economy for the 21st century,” said Kerry.