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Tag: Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

  • Pakistan hits back at Biden’s ‘dangerous nation’ comment

    Pakistan hits back at Biden’s ‘dangerous nation’ comment

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    ISLAMABAD — Pakistan pushed back Saturday against a comment by President Joe Biden in which he called the South Asian country “one of the most dangerous nations in the world.”

    Biden was at an informal fundraising dinner at a private residence in Los Angeles on Thursday sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when he made the comment. Speaking about China and its leader Xi Jinping, he pondered the U.S.’s role in relation to China as it grapples with its positions on Russia, India and Pakistan.

    “How do we handle that?” he said, according to a transcript on the White House web page. “How do we handle that relative to what’s going on in Russia? And what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

    Pakistan’s current prime minister and two former prime ministers rejected the statement as baseless, and the country’s acting foreign secretary summoned the U.S. ambassador on Saturday for an explanation of Biden’s remarks.

    “Pakistan’s disappointment and concern was conveyed to the US envoy on the unwarranted remarks, which were not based on ground reality or facts,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said earlier in Karachi that he believed it was the sort of misunderstanding that was created when there was a lack of engagement, apparently referring to the former government of Imran Khan and its perceived lack of engagement in international diplomacy.

    “When Pakistan has nuclear assets we know how to keep them safe and secure, how to protect them as well,” Zardari said.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a statement rejected Biden’s remarks calling them factually incorrect and misleading. He said Pakistan over the years has proved itself to be a responsible nuclear state, and its nuclear program is managed through a technically sound command and control system. He pointed to Pakistan’s commitment to global standards including those of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    Sharif said Pakistan and the U.S. have a long history of friendly and mutually beneficial relations. “It is our sincere desire to cooperate with the U.S. to promote regional peace and security,” he said.

    Zardari, speaking to reporters, said if there is any question about nuclear weapons security in the region, it should be raised with Pakistan’s nuclear-armed neighbor, India. He said India recently fired a missile that landed accidentally in Pakistan.

    Pakistan and India have been arch-rivals since their independence from British rule in 1947. They have bitter relations over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between them and claimed by both in its entirety. They fought two of their three wars over Kashmir.

    Two former prime minsters took to Twitter to respond to Biden’s comments.

    Former premier Nawaz Sharif, the current prime minister’s brother, said Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state that is perfectly capable of safeguarding its national interests while respecting international law and practices. Pakistan became a nuclear state in 1998 when Sharif was in power for the second time.

    “Our nuclear program is in no way a threat to any country. Like all independent states, Pakistan reserves the right to protect its autonomy, sovereign statehood and territorial integrity,” he said.

    Former premier Imran Khan tweeted that Biden is wrong about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, saying he knows for a fact that they are secure. “Unlike US which has been involved in wars across the world, when has Pakistan shown aggression especially post-nuclearization ?”

    Khan was ousted in April in a no-confidence vote in parliament and has put forward, without giving evidence, a claim that he was ousted as the result of a U.S.-led plot involving Sharif. The U.S. and Sharif deny the accusation.

    Zardari noted that Biden’s statement was not made at any formal platform like a news conference but at an informal fundraising dinner. “I don’t believe it negatively impacts the relations between Pakistan and the U.S.,” he said.

    Pakistan and the U.S. have been traditional allies but their relations have been bumpy at times. Pakistan served as a front-line state in the U.S.-led war on terror following the 9/11 attacks. But relations soured after U.S. Navy Seals killed al-Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden at a compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s military academy in May 2011.

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  • Top Pakistan diplomat urges flood aid, patience with Taliban

    Top Pakistan diplomat urges flood aid, patience with Taliban

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Pakistan’s foreign minister says the international community should work with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, not against them, when it comes to combatting foreign extremist groups and the economic and humanitarian crises in that country — even as many U.S. officials say the Taliban have proved themselves unworthy of such cooperation.

    Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s top diplomat, spoke to The Associated Press in the final days of a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and to Washington that has focused on trying to draw more world attention to unprecedented flooding that has one-third of his country underwater.

    Unrelenting monsoon rains that scientists say are worsened by climate change have killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and destroyed much of the country’s staple food and commercial crops.

    Pakistan is among many countries hardest-hit by climate change that have become increasingly outspoken in seeking more financial assistance from richer nations. Past and current economic and industrial booms of China, the United States and other leading economies are the biggest contributors to climate change, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels.

    The roughly 30 million people in Pakistan reported to be displaced by the floods are “truly paying in the forms of their lives and their livelihoods for the industrialization of other countries,” said Zardari.

    “And justice would be that we work together” globally, “that we’re not left alone, to deal with the consequences of this tragedy,” he said.

    Zardari is the son of a past Pakistani prime minister and a past president. He became foreign minister in April.

    He met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday. The Biden administration on the same day announced another $10 million in food aid for Pakistan, on top of more than $56 million in flood relief and humanitarian assistance this year.

    More broadly, however, the Biden administration and other governments of leading economic nations have delivered only a small part of the $100 billion in annual aid they have pledged to help less-wealthy nations survive the droughts, rising seas and other disasters of climate change and switch to cleaner energy themselves.

    “We expect the United States to be one of the leading players” in that, said Zardari, who also spoke approvingly of a nascent proposal out of the U.N. in which developed nations could cancel out existing debt as a form of climate aid.

    “We’ve not yet seen — and that doesn’t mean we won’t see — the translation of this vision to practicalities on the ground” in terms of the overall climate aid, he said.

    Zardari, who spoke to the AP on Tuesday at Pakistan’s embassy, also gave contentious recommendations that the U.S. work more directly with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Pakistan and the United States have shared widely varying amounts of cooperation against violent armed groups sheltering in Afghanistan over the decades. The U.S. long has been at odds with many Pakistani officials over sympathetic handling and support for the Taliban.

    No country recognizes the Taliban, a group sanctioned as a terrorist organization that retook power by military force in August 2021, as Afghanistan’s legitimate government. The United States and the international community at large have sought to deal with billions of dollars in frozen Afghan Central Bank funds, to institute financial reforms, and to deliver badly needed aid to ordinary Afghans with minimal involvement by the Taliban.

    “At the risk of hurting anyone’s feelings, I think it’s important to mention that these funds, it’s not the Taliban’s funds, it’s not the Americans’ funds. These are funds that belong to the people of Afghanistan,” Zardari said.

    Economic isolation and privation such as Afghanistan has experienced since the Taliban takeover only feed authoritarianism and extremism, he said. The best financial outcomes would work through existing institutions, now in Taliban hands, not through “some sort of parallel government.”

    Asked if he meant the U.S. needed to hold its nose and deal with Afghanistan’s ruling power, Zardari said, “Pretty much.”

    Meanwhile, the U.S. discovery that the global leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had taken up refuge in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital since the Taliban had returned to power has left U.S. leaders condemning Taliban officials for alleged complicity. The U.S. killed Zawahiri in a drone strike in July.

    The Taliban had yet to have the time and ability to grapple with extremist groups as a government should, Zardari said. “For them to demonstrate their will to take on terrorist organizations, we need to help them build their capacity to also do so” before judging them, he said.

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