LAHORE: In an interview to CNN, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said that the United States is not present in South Asia for peace and stability but to create chaos in the region.
“As George Friedman states in his book ‘The Next 100 Years’, the US is present there to create chaos in the region so that Russia, China, Iran and other regional countries can be contained,” Khar said.
“Should be more concerned about tweeter than tweet”
Taking jibe at the US president Donald Trump, Khar said that if she was in the Foreign Office of Pakistan when Trump tweeted his allegations against Pakistan, she would “frankly ignore it.”, and be “more concerned about the tweeter than the tweet.”
“The US is currently the superpower, but if you’re going to tweet away your foreign policy, then clearly frankly if I was in the Foreign Office of Pakistan, I would totally ignore this tweet,” she said, adding that Trump is a habitual tweeter “who tweets rather flippantly, almost like which side of the bed you woke up on. After all the other tweets, I think we should be more concerned about the tweeter than the tweet.”
In his first tweet of 2018, Trump had accused Pakistan of harbouring terrorists and announced cutting all further aid to Islamabad.
In the tweet, Trump said “the US had foolishly given Pakistan over $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years” and accused Pakistan of thinking “US leaders to be fools”.”They give safe havens to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” he added.
‘Reliance on the US exaggerated’
Khar said that Trump’s belief about Pakistan’s dependence on US aid was “exaggerated.”
“I don’t think we’re dependent on it at all. As someone who managed Pakistan’s portfolios for almost five years, I can tell you that our reliance on them is vastly exaggerated,” she told the interviewer.
Lashing out at the Trump, Khar said one doesn’t need to be a “stable genius” to do some basic mathematics.
“He talked about a $33 billion that Pakistan received from US. The fact is, since 2001 Pakistan has received somewhere around $4.8 billion under the head of military assistance, and $5.3 billion in the realm of civilian assistance.”
‘Pakistan happily scapegoated’
Khar claimed that “Pakistan has been happily scapegoated for the immense failure in Afghanistan for which Islamabad is an equal victim to Kabul”.
“We can’t afford to be flippant about the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. Warlord-ism all over the place in Afghanistan, where Taliban have taken over,” she said.
Sharing her thoughts on Pakistan’s ties with China, she said: “China is a regional strategic partner, perhaps the only real strategic partner we’ve had… not from today or the past five years but for the last four decades. With them (China), we have complete alignment of interests.”
