ISLAMABAD: Pakistani national security adviser Moeed Yusuf said on Thursday the Pakistani prime minister was not waiting for a call from US President Joe Biden, saying he wished the US “good luck” if it felt it did not need to engage with Islamabad at a crucial juncture such as the US withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.
Yusuf was speaking during an interview to Pakistani news channel Geo News.
In an interview to Axios anchor Jonathan Swan last week, Khan said Biden could speak to him “whenever he has time ... at the moment, clearly, he has other priorities.”
“If they don’t want to [call], then good luck, simple as that,” Yusuf said when asked why Biden had not made contact with PM Imran Khan since the US president took over office in January. “No one is sitting here waiting for someone to talk or not talk. If they don’t want to, fine.”
“What they should be talking about is not just Afghanistan but also the bilateral dialogue … commerce, trade. Talk about that,” Yusuf said.
“If they [US] want to have a serious conversation on how to find a solution [in Afghanistan], Pakistan is available. If they just want to talk to us about getting [military] bases, then that answer they have already gotten,” the national security adviser said, referring to Khan’s recent remarks that Pakistan would “absolutely not” give military bases to the US to carry out counter-terror operations in post-withdrawal Afghanistan.
