Washington, Jan. 17 (TNS): Pakistan’s former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said if she was in the Foreign Office of Pakistan when the infamous Donald Trump tweet happened, she would “frankly ignore it.”, and be “more concerned about the tweeter than the tweet.”
In an interview to CNN, Khar was asked what her reaction was to the tweet, to which she responded, “my reaction was, what is the leadership of the world coming to.
The United States 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.”
“This person 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,” remarked Khar.
When asked whether she thinks the Pakistani government would retaliate, she said she would respond to the policy statement given out on South Asia “which wasn’t encouraging for Pakistan,” because that was a government approach.
Khar further said externalising the massive failure in Afghanistan “is not a solution, and unfortunately we’ve seen this earnest need on the other side.”
The former minister also commented on Trump’s decision to take away the aid it gives to Pakistan saying the country’s dependence on US aid has been “rather exaggerated”.
“I don’t think we’re dependent on it all.
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As someone who managed Pakistan’s portfolio’s for almost five years, I can tell you that our reliance on them is vastly exaggerated.”
Taking a jibe at 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 $4.8bn under the head of security assistance, and $5.3bn in the realm of civilian assistance,” she noted.
Speaking on the US-Pak relationship during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Khar said “they both very conveniently got out of the relationship and the loss was Pakistan’s to bear.”
“All the mujahideen which had been trained on our soil, all the infiltration of terrorist extremist mindset which had happened in our people’s minds was left for us to deal with and America was happily moved away,” said Khar.
She further said Pakistan’s effort in ridding Afghanistan from the Soviet “instilled extremism inside Pakistani society and changed the fabric of society forever,” but that Pakistan does not want to win any argument on the status of victimhood. Saying Pakistan has been happily scapegoated for the immense failure in Afghanistan for which Pakistan is an equal victim to Afghanistan.
“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.”
Khar was further questioned about Pakistan’s relationship with China and whether this moment is solidifying Pakistan turning away from the US towards China. The former FM responded saying as a foreign policy practitioner, she does not believe you have to turn away from one to turn towards another.
“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.”
