PTIs Vice President for Policy Planning, National Security and Foreign Affairs expressed amusement at the manner in which PML-N Chief, Mian Nawaz Sharif, was seeking to toe the US line on India and other issues thereby sending a confused message to the country and his own supporters.
PTI seeks peace in the neighbourhood but it realizes that a durable and just peace can only come when the very real political conflicts that exist between neighbours are resolved through dialogue based on principles of justice and fair play. PTI feels the Security Route to cooperation similar to the origins of the EU in the European Coal and Steel Community is the best way to dtente and lasting peace in the region since it focuses on conflict resolution not conflict management.
On the other hand, it is clear that as the PML-N continues to see its popularity falling rapidly, its leader has revealed a desperation in trying to gain US support as an alternative to the support of his own people.
Asif Zardari has openly and brazenly continued to follow US diktat on all foreign policy issues, including in the context of India one aspect of which has been the continuing delays on dealing with Indias increasing theft of Pakistani waters. It has also been in the Zardari regime that the highest number of US citizens have received Pakistans national state awards. Now, Nawaz Sharif has also decided to jump on the US bandwagon in the vain hope that that would bring him closer to power again in Pakistan. Most recently this was reflected in a speech he made at a SAFMA function in Lahore in the presence of visiting Indians.
Unfortunately for Nawaz, his efforts in this speech, to create a new perspective on India, and his strange response to a critique of it by a major media chief, have only resulted in absurdities and confusion as well as creating a total backtracking of some of Muslim League policies.
For instance, he actually thanked India for, as he put it, playing a major role in making Pakistan an atomic state. Given how earlier he had not only claimed sole credit for the decision for Pakistan to go nuclear what was Indias major role in assisting Pakistan? Did India provide technical assistance or major political and economic support to Pakistan? Certainly Indian tests in 1998 were a major incentive for Pakistan to also go overtly nuclear but the fact is that Pakistan already had a clandestine nuclear weapons capability much before 1998. He also expressed regret over both Pakistan and India taking the overt nuclear step in 1998 which again is in total contradiction to the Muslim League and Pakistans position supporting a nuclear capability for the country to counter the conventional strategic military imbalance and continuing external threats.
Even more bizarre are Sharifs claims that had he been allowed to complete the Motorway up to Tashkent and India had taken the same Motorway to Calcutta (Kolkata) trade and business would have been carried out and automatically the Jammu and Kashmir issue would have been resolved. Clearly, in his eagerness to appeal to the US, he has chosen to forget what the Kashmir dispute is all about. Factually, the Kashmir dispute is neither about trade or commerce nor about mere territory. It is about the right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination a principle enshrined in the UN Charter and reiterated in UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir. Additionally, Pakistans legitimacy as a party to the dispute also rest on UNSC resolutions. To reduce resolution of the Dispute simply to increased trade and business is to insult the Kashmiri martyrs who have generation after generation laid down their lives for their right to self determination.
Nawaz Sharif seems to now also be confused over the culture and heritage of Pakistan as a whole since he declared at the SAFMA function that Pakistanis and Indians are members of the same society and share the same background, culture and even the dishes and vegetables. A little study of our history would have shown that Muslims and Hindus in India never lived as one society since the Hindu society was and continues to be caste ridden. Even more pertinent, while some segments of Punjab and Sindh may have common cultural and historic links with northern India, the people of southern Punjab, Balochistan and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa have greater cultural, historic and linguistic links with Iran and Afghanistan. Most critical, generations of Pakistanis born after 1947 do not have any cultural or societal links with India and the historic links are those of oppression, wars and breaking up of the country.
Finally, one wonders why Mr Sharif did not form a Kargil Commission when he was still in power? After all, he had ample opportunity when he went to Washington in July or when he came back and ordered the withdrawal. He was, as he liked to claim, a PM with a heavy mandate. After all, the Indians formed their Commission immediately. Sharifs present rantings against the military are sounding more like attempts to please the US rather than anything substantive.
Perhaps Mr Nawaz Sharif needs to revisit facts on some of the sensitive issues he has held forth on recently in a state of confused pandering to US diktat, which will neither result in regional stability nor will it allow those who are losing popular support to come to power.
Link:
http://insaf.pk/News/tabid/60/artic...Nawaz-Sharifs-recent-statements-on-India.aspx