Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz says Pakistan and Nato have common objectives of ensuring peace and stability at regional as well as global level. He said this while talking to Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Cheffer who called on him here on Tuesday.
Shaukat said Pakistan is keen to establish more regular political dialogues to strengthen their ties.
He said they are co-operating in military field especially in the training. He said Pakistan wants to see a stable and strong Afghanistan to emerge so that trade and other relations between the two countries and beyond are fully leveraged.
He told Nato Secretary that although Pakistan is not an aid giving country, it extended three hundred million dollars to Afghanistan for reconstruction purposes.
The Prime Minister also briefed Jaap de Hoop about Jirga commission meetings and said these are prelude to a meeting of grand jirga of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He thanked Nato for providing logistic and material support to Pakistan in the aftermath of earthquake.
He told Nato Secretary General that there are still three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He said Karzai government agreed to take back the refugees. He said Pakistan wants to close refugees' camps along the border so that these do not work as safe havens for terrorists. He said Pakistan is fencing its border with Afghanistan selectively to prevent illegal cross border movement.
The Prime Minister expressed concern over growing production of drugs in Afghanistan and drug money funding global terrorism. Later, talking to newsmen, the Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Cheffer said his visit is aimed to strengthen political dialogue between Pakistan and Nato and they absolutely agreed over the need for doing that.
He said they agreed to maximise already quite developed military to military contacts and relations at different levels. He said Pakistan, Nato and the international community are in the same boat to fight terrorism and assured that they would succeed and in Afghanistan and the region.
He said their common objective is to fight against the faceless world-wide terrorism and they should not give those people an opportunity to prevail.
Jaap said he visited Pakistan at the invitation of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and hoped that the first ever visit would help increase our relations.
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