By IANS,
Islamabad : There is an antipathy towards the US that transcends the merely political and has in fact “become visceral”, said a Pakistani daily.
Taking a dig at US Ambassador Cameron Munter, an editorial in the News International said that the envoy “appears to be on another planet entirely when it comes to the state and nature of the Pak-US relationship”.
Speaking at the Harvard-Kennedy School, Munter had said that “Pakistani politicians don’t want Americans to go away from their country”.
“This may or may not be true of our politicians and it does seem to be something of a generalization; but it is not the view of probably a majority of the people of Pakistan. There is an antipathy towards the US that transcends the merely political and has, in recent years, become visceral.”
It said that the reshaping of Pakistan’s relationship with the US that was triggered by last year’s NATO airstrike is still a “work in progress”.
The airstrikes Nov 26 last year on two Pakistani Army checkposts in Mohmand Agency in the northwest region killed two dozen soldiers, sparking outrage in Pakistan.
Islamabad promptly barred the passage of NATO supplies through the country and decided to boycott an international conference focussed on the future course of action in Afghanistan. It also told the US to vacate the key Shamsi airbase in Balochistan that was used to launch drone strikes.
The editorial went on to say that the “relationship outside the closed box of intelligence agencies is badly decayed”.
“It is that relationship, the one that is harder to define, that requires care and maintenance,” it added.