Parliamentarians have expressed dissatisfaction on the foreign policy of the present government during a briefing given to them by the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, it was learnt. Sources said that the joint meeting of foreign Affairs standing committee was held in the foreign office on Thursday on the request of Foreign Minister aimed at evolving national consensus on foreign policy.
Some members of the Committee said that failure of country's foreign policy was crystal clear from the lukewarm response by most of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) as most of the pledges have poured in either from US or UK while Arab and other countries hardly contributed the promised amount. The members said that the US was helping Pakistan because of its interest in Afghanistan.
Senators Professor Khurshid Ahmed, Syed Tahir Mashhadi, Talha Mehmood and Sughra Imam were not satisfied with the performance of Foreign office. According to them US interference and drone attacks are still continuing the way it was being done in Musharraf era adding no serious effort have been made by Foreign Office to improve relations with Iran and other Gulf countries.
Briefing the Committee, Foreign Minister said his meeting with the members of Parliamentary Committees is part of the efforts towards evolving national consensus on key foreign policy issues and to seek guidance from parliamentarians. Giving details about Pakistan-India relations in the backdrop of the Thimphu meeting between the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India on 29 April 2010, the Foreign Minister said that as a result of his telephonic conversation with India's Minister for External Affairs on 11 May, a meeting between the two Foreign Ministers would take place in Islamabad on 15 July 2010.
The meeting will be preceded by a meeting between the two Foreign Secretaries in Islamabad in June to prepare agenda for the 15 July meeting. He said it was agreed by the two Foreign Ministers that "the Thimphu spirit" should be kept alive. Qureshi said that resumption of the peace process was an important development but was not an end in itself.
Pakistan would enter the dialogue process with a positive and constructive mindset with the view to resolving all the bilateral issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, on the basis of sovereign equality and mutual respect.
He also briefed the meeting about Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan, Iran, China, US and the European Union. He said the democratic government of Pakistan had been able in the last two years to bring about a qualitative change in Pakistan's foreign policy. He said the foreign policy of Pakistan was now firmly aligned to its long-term security and development interests. The meeting was presided over by Senator Saleem Saifullah Khan, Chairman of the Senate standing committee on Foreign Affairs.
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