J K News Today
Jammu, January 5: Pakistan has opened a new dialogue with the Donald trump administration after the US cut aid to Pakistan on Thursday .
In a release in Islamabad , Pakistan foreign office spokesman disclosed , “ We are engaged with the US administration on the issue of security cooperation and await further details.”.
He said the “ Impact of US’ decision on pursuit of common objectives is also likely to emerge more clearly in due course of time. It, however, needs to be appreciated that Pakistan has fought the war against terrorism largely from its own resources which has cost over $120 billion in 15 years.
We are determined to continue to do all it takes to secure the lives of our citizens and broader stability in the region,” the spokesman said in a sort of explanation .
“ We believe that Pakistan-US cooperation in fighting terrorism has directly served US national security interests as well as the larger interests of international community. It has helped decimate Al-Qaeda and fight other groups who took advantage of ungoverned spaces, a long porous border and posed a common threat to peace,” Pakistan’s spokesman said while offering the account of its expenditure as against the claim of the US President that Washington had given 31 billion US dollars to Pakistan to fight terrorism, but in return all it got were “ lies and deceit.”
This charge triggered a war of words between Washington and Islamabad with Pakistan claiming that it got the money as a reimbursement for the services it rendered in fighting terrorism.
The spokesman said , “Through a series of major counter-terrorism operations Pakistan cleared all these areas resulting in elimination of organized terrorist presence leading to significant improvement in security in Pakistan..
Pakistan , however, made it a point to blame Afghanistan for the failure of reciprocal action from Kabul . He said “ Our efforts towards peace are awaiting reciprocal actions from the Afghan side in terms of clearance of vast stretches of ungoverned spaces on the Afghan side, bilateral border management, repatriation of Afghan Refugees, controlling poppy cultivation, drug trafficking and initiating Afghan-led and owned political reconciliation in Afghanistan.”
As a word of advice and rapprochement , Pakistan spokesman said : “ Working towards enduring peace requires mutual respect and trust along with patience and persistence. Emergence of new and more deadly groups such as Daesh in Afghanistan call for enhancing international cooperation. Arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goalposts are counterproductive in addressing common threats.”
