ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said that the days of depending on the US for Pakistan to meet its military and other requirements are over.
In an interview with Arab News, Khaqan said that the world should recognise Pakistan’s efforts in fighting the “world’s war” on terror.
He further said that Pakistan has fought “a very hard and vicious” war on terror, adding that “200,000 of our troops is deployed. We have 6,500 Shaheeds (martyrs) in the Army.
He added: “Nobody has fought a bigger war on terror than we have, with our own resources. Even the most conservative economic estimates of Pakistan’s losses are over $120 billion. It has been a very difficult war, but our army has performed very well.”
He added, “If one source dries up, we have no option but to go to another source. It may cost more, it may consume more resources, but we have to fight that war, and that’s what we emphasized to all the people that we met,”
“We have major US weapons systems in our military, but we’ve also diversified. We have Chinese and European systems. Recently, for the first time we inducted Russian attack helicopters” he said.
To a question regarding India’s role for peace building in Afghanistan, Abbasi said that he wants peace to be owned and led by Afghans.
“We don’t believe that injecting India into the Pakistan-US relationship will help resolve anything, especially in Afghanistan, where we don’t see any role for India. India has a relationship with the US. That is between them and the US.”
Pakistan wants an “equal relationship or partnership with the US, like every other nation,” he said.
He said that in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and side meetings, he stressed that nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan.
"We’re partners in the war on terror, and that’s what we emphasized. We emphasised to everybody we met [at the UNGA] that nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan”.
He disclosed that investigations showed that the person who carried out a suicide attack on deputy chairman of Senate in Mastung, Balochistan on May 12 was an Afghan national who had crossed the border for the attack.
“The reality today is that much of the area bordering Pakistan is controlled by the Taliban. The people we’re fighting in Pakistan today, their sanctuaries are in Afghanistan, their leadership is living there, the planning is done there, the logistical bases are there, and they regularly cross the border and attack our installations. We recently had a suicide attack on the deputy chairman of the Senate.
He survived, but 22 people were killed. It was by an Afghan national who had crossed the border to attack his convoy deep inside Pakistan,” he said.
Abbasi said that in the recently held meeting between Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Asif told his counterpart that Islamabad pursues a zero-tolerance approach to “all terrorist and militant groups.”
He called his meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence, ‘very constructive’.
“There was no meeting scheduled (with President Trump). In fact, the meeting with Vice President Pence wasn’t scheduled [either]. It was at their request,” the prime minister said.