ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s defense minister Khawaja Asif has said that his country wants strong relations with the United States and is willing to live with the American decision to strengthen ties with India, though Washington should not push Islamabad into situations where it is forced to make hard political or geostrategic choices.
The minister issued the statement during a wide-ranging interview with Newsweek, an American publication, in which he spoke at length about Pakistan’s relations with the US and other international actors like China.
Pakistani officials have frequently warned against another bipolar rivalry in the world while highlighting the dangers of its split into two power camps.
“We do not have any problem with the United States developing a partnership with India if it is not at the cost of Pakistan,” Asif told the magazine while pointing out that his country shared common borders with China, Afghanistan, Iran, and India and would like to have good relations with them.
“So, I personally feel that some appreciation is required in Washington about our situation, and we should not be pushed into a situation where we have to make some very hard choices,” he continued.
The minister said Pakistan valued its relations with the US, though it sometimes complicated Islamabad’s diplomatic engagements with other international and regional players.
“It has been very difficult for us over the last many decades to maintain this balancing act between our relationship with the United States of America and with regional powers like China, our friends in the Arabian Gulf, Iran, and, of course, the Russian Federation,” he said.
Asif expressed optimism that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned visit to China would help improve ties between the two global powers, creating more space for countries like Pakistan, which needed both states due to its “vulnerable economy.”
He pointed out that Pakistan’s diplomatic proximity with China had also provided “a corridor to the United States” to develop ties with Beijing in the past.
Pakistan’s state minister for foreign affairs Hina Rabbani Khar also raised similar concerns about balancing the US-China policy in a recent interview with POLITICO, wherein she maintained it was not in her country’s interest to take sides in the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
