By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : A three-way summit here has apparently brought home to Pakistan the US message delivered by President Barack Obama to officials down the line that Taliban extremists within the country rather than India pose its real threat.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari acknowledged as much in interviews with various TV channels here over the last couple of days after a series of meetings with US officials and a trilateral summit with Obama and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
“Well, I am already on record. I have never considered India a threat,” Zardari told PBS Public Broadcasting Service. “I have always considered India as a neighbour, which we want to improve our relationship with.”
“We have had some cold times and we have had some hard times with them. We have gone to war thrice, but democracies are always trying to improve relationships,” he said.Asked about moving troops from the Indian border to the tribal areas of Pakistan to fight the war against terrorism, Zardari said: “Pakistan has already done so.”
However, in a interview with NBC Sunday, he put the relationship with India in a “different context” of partition, declining to compare it with the threat from Taliban.
Asked if he considered the Taliban to be a bigger threat today than India, Zardari said: “I consider it a different – they’re – India’s a country and Pakistan is a state…we’re two states which in fact Pakistan stemmed out of the subcontinent out of India. So it’s a different relationship, it’s a different context.”
Zardari however acknowledged that “there is a war” against Taliban inside Pakistan. “It’s a war of our existence. We’ve been fighting this war much before they attacked 9/11.”
“They’re kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world,” he said referring to Taliban’s creation to fight the then Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Dismissing suggestions that “Pakistan’s leaders have been both public enemies and private friends” to extremists to get billions in aid to boost the Pakistani economy and military against Afghanistan and India, Zardari said: “I think it’s an old concept, an old theory.”
“And what billions are you talking about? Like I said, a billion dollar a year? That’s not even – altogether, this aid package is not even one tenth of what you gave AIG,” he said. “So let’s face it; we need, in fact, much more help.”
Endorsement of US stand about its obsession with India as a mortal threat being misguided has already brought it promises of $1.5 billion in annual aid over the next five years with officials and experts alike cautioning the Congress against attaching too many strings to it.
On a personal plane, the stand has won Zardari expression of public support from US officials as the democratically elected leader of Pakistan days after they were said to be making overtures to his rival Nawaz Sharif.
Has Pakistan really changed its colours vis-�-vis India? Only time will tell but a little lip service does not hurt, observers suggested.