ISLAMABAD: US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is in Pakistan for meetings with top officials, including the prime minister and the army chief today, Friday, one day after she told a gathering in India the US did not see itself building a “broad relationship” with Islamabad.
Sherman is the senior most US diplomat to visit the South Asian nation since President Joe Biden’s administration assumed office in Washington. She comes to Pakistan after a trip to India during which she said her visit to the Pakistani capital was aimed at accomplishing a “specific and narrow purpose.”
After Sherman’s meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, his office said he told the visitor dignitary Islamabad sought a “broad-based, long-term and lasting relationship” with the United States based on economic cooperation and the mutual promotion of peace in the region.
“The process of regular and systematic dialogue between Pakistan and the United States is essential for the promotion of our mutual interests as well as common regional goals,” a statement from Qureshi’s office said. 
But a day earlier, while addressing an event in Mumbai, Sherman was quoted by media as telling a gathering:
“We [US] don’t see ourselves building our broad relationship with Pakistan and we have no interest in returning to the days of a hyphenated India, Pakistan … That’s not where we are, that’s not where we are going to be.”
Last month, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said the United States would be looking at its relationship with Pakistan in the coming weeks to formulate what role Washington would want it to play in the future of Afghanistan.
In the first public hearing in Congress about Afghanistan since the August collapse of the US-backed Afghan government, Blinken told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that Pakistan has a “multiplicity of interests some that are in conflict with ours.”
“It is one that is involved hedging its bets constantly about the future of Afghanistan, it’s one that’s involved harboring members of the Taliban ... It is one that’s also involved in different points cooperation with us on counterterrorism,” Blinken said.
Asked by lawmakers if it was time for Washington to reassess its relationship with Pakistan, Blinken said the administration would soon be doing that.
“This is one of the things we’re going to be looking at in the days, and weeks ahead — the role that Pakistan has played over the last 20 years but also the role we would want to see it play in the coming years and what it will take for it to do that,” he said.
The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan culminated with a hastily organized airlift that left thousands of US-allied Afghans behind and was punctuated by a suicide bombing outside Kabul’s airport that killed 13 US troops and scores of Afghans.
The United States and Western countries are in a difficult balancing act in the aftermath of the Taliban’s victory — reluctant to recognize the group while accepting the reality that they will have to engage with them to prevent a looming humanitarian crisis.
Pakistan has had deep ties with the Taliban and has been accused of supporting the group as it battled the US-backed government in Kabul for 20 years — charges denied by Islamabad.
During Friday’s meeting with Sherman, Qureshi said an inclusive government in Afghanistan could be a “reliable partner” for the international community, urging global partners to continue aid to the war-ravaged country.
“We hope that the new setup in Afghanistan will work for peace and stability as well as for the betterment of all Afghan people,” Qureshi’s office said in a statement. “A representative of the Afghan people and a broad-based government can be a reliable partner for the international community.”
The foreign minister urged the international community to provide humanitarian and financial aid to Afghanistan and take “concrete steps to build a sustainable economy to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people.”