Terrorism should not be used as pretext to justify occupation

The war on terrorism should not be used as a pretext to justify occupation or to limit the civil liberties of the people, said Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK, Dr Maleeha Lodhi here on Tuesday.
Addressing the heads of the associations and organisations of Overseas Pakistanis in the UK, in one of the series of her planned meetings at the high commission, she said Pakistan was an active partner in the war on terror, and committed to rooting it out.
Dr Maleeha said Pakistan had views on how to tackle the terrorism. The root causes of terrorism must be addressed by the international community, she stressed.
She said a clear distinction should be drawn between the genuine freedom movements and terrorism.
Terrorism should not be linked to any religion it was not specific to any faith, said Maleeha while briefing the community leaders on the national issues and her priorities as an envoy.
She told them that with the modicum of economic and political stability in place, the country was being steered towards development by the elected leadership who was keen to see the benefits of economic progress to be trickled down to the common man, adding the country had come out of the economic crisis it faced just four years ago.
Like many other countries, Dr Maleeha said Pakistan too faced many challenges in the post-9/11 situation, and as a responsible state, it had decided to co-operate with the international community in its efforts to fight terrorism.
Setting out her priorities, Dr Maleeha said she was making efforts to further deepen Islamabad's engagement with Britain to improve relations between the two countries. Secondly, she was committed to further cementing trade and investment relations between Pakistan and the UK, as Britain was not only the fourth largest trading partner, but also the biggest foreign investor in Pakistan.
Dr Maleeha said her key priority was to improve the image of the country as the images here did not portray the realities on the ground, and urged the community leaders to be her partners in accomplishing this task.
There was no place of either sacrilegious attacks or honour-killings in Islam, she said, and urged the overseas Pakistanis to raise their voice whenever there were such incidents.
Their condemnation of these incidents would help improve the image because a vast majority of Pakistanis were moderate Muslims and abhor extremism, said Maleeha, who received appreciation from the community leaders for markedly improving the consular services since her arrival here about six months back.
The community leaders on the occasion expressed their views on various issues, and gave some good suggestions to improve the image of the country, and streamline the consular services.
One of the main complaints by the community leaders was regarding the issue of National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP), and they informed her that they had not received the Id cards even after a lapse of eight months of the submission of their applications. Dr Maleeha told them that she was already seized of the matter and a proposal was under consideration to set up Swift Centres to issue the NICOP from the UK.