WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Imran Khan has promised to underpin the fractured US-Pakistan relationship on “truth and trust” in future.
Addressing to over 40 Congressmen and Congresswomen of the Pakistan Caucus in the US Congress, the Pakistani prime minister said he had been visiting the United States for over forty years and say firsthand how the cordiality of relationship turned into mutual mistrust in the last one and a half decade.
Invited to speak at the Congress by the US Speaker of the House of Representative Nancy Pelosi, Imran Khan said: “It was painful to see the mistrust [developing] between the allies who have been together during the Cento and Seato days and then during the jihad in Afghanistan [against the erstwhile Soviet Union).” He said Pakistan because a frontline ally once again and was recognised as a non-Nato partner in the US War on Terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The prime minister said a lot of misunderstandings were allowed to be developed between the peoples and the governments of the two countries. In the process, Pakistan lost over 70,000 people including members of its security forces in a fight against terrorists, suffered billions of dollars in the process wherein the US War on Terror turned into our own war of existence. “There were fears if we would survive this war.”
Prime Minister Imran Khan said the only way forward was to be truthful to each other, “telling what we can do”.
He said Pakistan was strategically placed between the two biggest markets in the world and the largest energy resources and remained desirous of being a partner of the United States where the partnership was based on mutual respect and regard for each other’s integrity and respect.
Various members of the Caucus spoke to the event, praising the prime minister’s effort to rekindle the bilateral relationship and supporting the US efforts to bring peace in Afghanistan through a dialogue-based solution between the Talban and the Afghan government.