Prospects of Pakistan-US relations are bright & our ties are poised to grow in the future: Masood Khan
WASHINGTON, Nov 03, (SABAH): “The prospects of Pakistan-US relations are bright and our ties are poised to grow in the future,” Sardar Muhammad Masood Khan, Pakistan Ambassador to the United States, said while speaking as a keynote speaker at a two-day conference organized by the US top think tank Atlantic Council, John Hopkin’s University, University of Lahore and Engro Corporation on Future of Pakistan-US relations.
“Pakistan-US relations now have been de-hyphenated from India and Afghanistan. Pakistan and the US now have stand-alone, broad-based relationship”, said Pakistan’s top envoy to the United States.
Fred Kempe, Atlantic Council’s President, and Dilawar Syed, US Special Representative for Commerce and Business Affairs, addressed the inaugural session of conference. Sardar Muhammad Masood Khan paid tribute to Fred Kempe and other sponsors for ensuring participation of private sector corporation and two Universities in this conference.
The Ambassador said that Pakistan and the United States were developing a singular trajectory with responsibilities towards the broader region. “We are engaged right now to recalibrate, reenergize and rejuvenate a broad-based relationship in the new technological age”, he said.
“The US policy in the past was based on regional equilibrium. There is no reason it should not be now”, he said. The US relationships with Pakistan and India, he said, stood on their own.
Ambassador Masood Khan said that Pakistan and the US understood each other’s strategic calculus and imperative. While Pakistan had strong ties with China, it wanted to have very robust ties with the United States in all fields.
Ambassador Masood Khan said that after the US troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, there was uncertainty and disquiet about the relevance and nature of our relationship. Two-way diplomacy, he said, has now brought the engagement to an even keel, thus leading to public pronouncements by the leadership of the two countries to give a fresh impetus to strengthen our bonds.
The Ambassador said that in the past 75 years, Pakistan and the United States had evolved a legacy of cooperation in diverse fields. Pakistan benefited economically and militarily from the US support and together they made the world safer through collaboration during the Cold War, by fighting terrorism, by contributing to UN peacekeeping and jointly conducting counter-piracy operations. “We have been partners in war and peace”, the Ambassador said.
The Ambassador said that the legacy of cooperation continues. Pakistan has helped the US in massive evacuations from Afghanistan, whereas the US has delivered 79 million vaccine doses to help Pakistan fight the Covid-19 pandemic, making it the top donor to Pakistan.
The Pakistani envoy expressed the confidence that a harmonious strategic alignment between Pakistan and the United States will create a salutary environment for scaling up bilateral ties in the economic, technological and educational domains. “We would not let geopolitics interfere with this framework,” he said.
Ambassador Masood Khan cautioned that it would be a fatal mistake to ignore our obligations in South Asia in regard to conflict management and conflict resolution, regional deterrence, response mechanisms and strategic stability. “These areas should not become international community’s blind spot because of the emerging security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region”, he said. He also called for reviving bilateral and multilateral diplomacy on Kashmir.
The envoy also said that sustainment of US origin legacy equipment and an end to the ban on sale of new defence platforms to Pakistan are legitimate expectations, as mutual confidence grows between Pakistan and the United States. In the security realm, the US and Pakistan are pursuing their shared interests to stabilize Afghanistan, counter terrorism and foster regional security.