Observer Report
Washington
Pakistan believes that the US can play an “important and critical” role in stopping Indian interference and maintaining peace and security of the region, Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan said in an interview to The Christian Science Monitor.
The views of Islamabad’s envoy to Washington were published on Friday, the same day Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the international media in the UAE that India is planning a surgical strike against Pakistan.
In another important development on Friday, a United Nations Military Observers vehicle came under Indian attack in Azad Kashmir along the Line of Control.
In the interview with the US magazine, Ambassador Khan noted that his country has successfully brought down the number of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan over the last decade and wrested control of large parts of the country from non-state actors.
“Over the last two years Pakistan has faced a resurgence of attacks and unfortunately we see the Indian footprint and Indian fingerprints all over the place,” he told the Monitor. Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan said, “We see the US as perhaps the only country in the world that is in a position to play an important and critical role on this issue”. He maintained that Pakistan was hopeful the US could work to support peace and security for our region.
James Dobbins, who served as a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Obama White House, said Pakistan’s “allegations of Indian support for separatists in the Balochistan region might indeed have merit since India has been suspected of such activity in the past”. Dobbins was of the view that the new Joe Biden administration may not be taking a very different approach to Pakistan than the Trump administration did.
The scholar, who is a senior fellow at the Rand Corp, underscored Islamabad’s critical role in the Afghan peace process and its importance for the US government.
“But Washington is more concerned about Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and with the Afghan Taliban, as it tries to wind down its longest war and implement a fragile peace plan struck by the Trump administration.”
The Indian network in Balochistan was exposed when Pakistan arrested a RAW agent who later confessed to his crimes and admitted New Delhi’s dirty role in destabilising the country.
