Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has once again renewed Islamabad call for transfer of sophisticated American drone technology to help Pakistan take out militants along the Afghan border.
While talking to CBS news channel, he said, "There are two issues why there is opposition to the drones. One is the issue of sovereignty. And the other is collateral damage. That is why what Pakistan is saying - transfer the technology to us. Give us the ownership and we can use this technology for the purpose that you want it to be used for." Pakistan and the United States, he said, have been allies for a very long time.
"And this relationship can only be built on trust and confidence. So if you lack trust and confidence, where are we going?" he said. Qureshi pointed out "today there is a consensus in Pakistan that these guys, the Taliban, and their value system is threatening what we believe in. "We have to fight them. Not for you - we have to fight them for ourselves."
Questioned about reasons behind rise in anti-American sentiment in the Pakistani public, the foreign minister said, "You have not reaped, sort of, the rewards of what you have given... You see giving money is one thing, but cultivating the people is something totally different. President (Barack) Obama is now reaching out to the Muslim world. Why is he doing that? Because he realises that the strategy of the past was not working."
However, Qureshi expressed concerns that Pakistan is facing a huge problem in the form of weapons inflow from across the Afghan border. "There is a constant flow of weapons into Pakistan. Where are they coming from? They're coming from across the border."
Asked if more US troops would be helpful to Afghanistan and to Pakistan, the foreign minister responded: "There are two sides of the border. What we have done in the last one year, in our opinion, our side of the border is being far better managed today. We have the terrorists on the run...Because today the local population in the tribal belt has risen against them. They are, for the first time, moving along with the troops searching for them."
He cautioned against suggestions of US pullout from the insurgency-wracked Afghanistan, "Oh, there'd be chaos, you know? You went in. You cannot leave without doing the job," he reacted to prospects of such a scenario. He also warned of a repetition of repercussions of such an abandonment of the region, as has been the case in the past.
"And (proponents of withdrawal) might look at the results then. Look what happened. Then you have 9/11s, right? And then you have, you know, these militants knocking on your door. Do you want that? No. The world, global economy will get affected. Do we want that? No." Qureshi, who is accompanying President Asif Ali Zardari to the UN General Assembly and bilateral meetings on the margins of the summit.
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