By IRNA,
Islamabad : Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari Monday asked visiting US special envoy for region to find ways and means to reach acceptable solutions to all problems.
“Weakening of relations was not an option for the two countries,” President Zardari said in meeting with the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Marc Grossman, presidential spokesman said.
Ambassador Grossman met President Zardari at a time when the arrest of a CIA contractor for killing two Pakistanis has badly hit bilateral relations.
Pakistan has so far rejected calls by the US to release Raymond Davis, who Washington says enjoys diplomatic immunity. Pakistan’s strand that the court would decide Davis diplomatic status has angered the US and it cancelled a tripartite meeting with Pakistan last month.
In a veiled reference to the controversy over the US shooter, President Zardari said, “Some isolated incidents that may be used by some to increase tensions and mistrust between the people of the two countries”.
“The President reiterated his call for Pakistan and United States to remain focused on the path of pursuing long-term, multifaceted and durable strategic ties for the realization of shared objectives than to be swayed by misperceptions,” the spokesman Farhatullah Babar quoted the President as saying.
The President also said that the world can not afford non-state actors to dictate their policies to governments adding that militants wanted to change the existing order.
Zardari said that the nation has paid heavily in the war against terrorism losing thousands of men and suffering colossal economic toll. He said that Pakistan was fighting its war against terrorism in a manner which was most suitable in the peculiar context of our own and no one should question our commitment or intentions.
Briefing media Spokesperson to the President Mr. Farhatullah Babar informed that the President during the meeting said that the sacrifices rendered by Pakistan in the ongoing battle against extremism were matchless. He said that this was a long-drawn battle where military means alone can not achieve complete victory as it was necessarily a battle of hearts and minds. He said that the Government from the very onset adopted policy of dialogue, development and deterrence to effectively take on the challenge posed by the militants. ‘Where our soldiers took on the militants head on, we have also pursued policies and actions to wean away our youth falling into the traps of militants’.
Other matters that came under discussion included Pakistan’s call for US support in securing preferential trade concessions, reimbursement of Coalition Support Funds arrears Pak-US bilateral relations, progress in the Strategic Dialogue and the Reconstruction Opportunity Zoness.