Islamabad, Oct 19 (TNS): Pakistan’s decade-old approach to the Middle East shaped by competing religious and post-colonial heritages needs re-imagining given the rise of new power poles in the Middle East, and focus on a more structured, firmer policy.
The country needs to redefine its security interests and cultivate partners in the Middle East beyond the Saudi Arabia-Iran binary. Given Russian support for the Assad regime in Syria driving up the international community’s stakes in the region, Pakistan must tread cautiously and not take sides.
This was the consensus of the speakers at the One-Day Conference ‘Insecurity in the Middle East: Implications for Pakistan’ organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, here in the capital today.
Ambassador (R) Abdul Basit, President IPRI, in his welcome address said that instability in the Middle East directly affects Pakistan. He highlighted that it is important to analyse the geostrategic and geoeconomic drivers of the crisis and review the policy measures that can be taken by Pakistan to identify issues arising out of the crisis and to guard the country’s interests there.
He hoped that the Conference would come up with useful recommendations on the subject for the decision-makers to plug loopholes in the Government’s Middle East policy.
In his keynote address, Ambassador Inamul Haque, Former Minister and Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Chairman, Board of Governors, IPRI said that the turmoil in the Middle East is neither spontaneous nor random.
