ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shahbaz Gill has said that the party wanted to establish cordial relations with US on equal footing, as we don’t believe in any kind of confrontation with any state.
Speaking at a presser, he said that the US is a superpower and like others, PTI also wants friendship with it but based on equality, adding there is no need to raise any slogan if the relations between the two countries are based on mutual respect.
He said former PM Imran Khan’s, who has accused the US of orchestrating his ouster from power, visit to Russia was part of Pakistan’s National Security Policy (NSP) under which Pakistan seeks to shift its priorities from geo-strategic to geo-economics.
Gill said under the country’s first NSP it was decided that Pakistan would not strain its ties with any country by sitting in the lap of any superpower.
He said that the former PM’s visit to Moscow was proposed by all stakeholders in the country and the purpose of the historic visit was to boost economic ties with Russia.
Last week, former PM and PTI chairman Imran drafted letters to President Dr Arif Alvi and the Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial, urging them to investigate the summary of an official meeting held at the Pakistan Embassy with Donald Lu, the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia and another US official.
In the letters, Imran declared that the summary contained proof that the vote of no-confidence (VNC) – which saw him ousted on April 9 – was part of a “foreign-funded conspiracy.”
The ex-premier’s letter to Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial stated, “given the grave nature of this threat to democracy in Pakistan through an externally-engineered regime change conspiracy, should the Supreme Court of Pakistan not have, examined the content of the cipher before demanding the VNC be held immediately.”
Similarly, Imran in his letter to the president said, “as head of the state of Pakistan and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, it is incumbent upon you to take action and order a public inquiry into this threat.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022