‘Pakistan believes in peaceful neighbourhood’

Sartaj says India pursuing policy of interference in neighbours’ affairs

ISLAMABAD: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said on Tuesday Pakistan believed in having a peaceful neighbourhood while India pursued a relentless policy of interference in neighbours’ affairs by funding terrorism.

He was addressing the inaugural session of the three-day 19th Sustainable Development Conference on “Sustainable Development: Envisaging the future together”, organised by the Sustainable Development 19th Sustainable Development Conference on “Sustainable Development: envisaging the future together” organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute here.

Aziz said the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was the right step towards this direction. He said Saarc was a big opportunity to see regional challenges, but postponement of the summit hosted by Pakistan was a great loss.

“Sustainable development of the country is hidden in trade promotion and not in financial assistance,” he said, adding, “Pakistan is on the path to peaceful co-existence for the betterment of coming generations.”

He said after the UK vote on the EU and the US presidential elections, the North-South collaboration was in danger and now there’s a need to strengthen the South-South collaboration for promotion of peace and prosperity in the region.

Chairing the session, Federal Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid said the government’s Vision 2025 had seven pillars and 25 goals and these goals were fully aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, meaning that Pakistan was now in line with the United Nations 2030 agenda.

He said implementation of the development agenda was possible with global and regional cooperation and CPEC was an example of this cooperation.  He said systemic monitoring machinery as well as capacity building was also required to implement the SDGs.  

SDPI Executive Director Dr Abid Qayyum Sulehri said the conference provided a platform to evaluate and learn what we have done wrong to avoid these mistakes in future.  He emphasized the need for cooperation for development and said today the challenges were global insolvable individually.