WASHINGTON: President Asif Ali Zardari, in his article published in the Washington Post, has stressed the need for resumption of serious dialogue between the two countries. He said that the recent verbal assaults by the United States government has not only helped terrorists but also affected the war against terror.
The strategy of blaming Pakistan not only had a damaging impact on the relationship between the two countries, it also compromised common goals of defeating terrorism, extremism and fanaticism, President Zardari wrote.
“It is time for the rhetoric to cool and for serious dialogue between allies to resume.”
The president elaborating the challenges faced by the country said: “Pakistan is pounded by the ravages of globally driven climate change, with floods once again making millions of our citizens homeless, we find that, instead of a dialogue with our closest strategic ally, we are spoken to instead of being heard. We are being battered by nature and by our friends. This has shocked a nation that is bearing the brunt of the terrorist whirlwind in the region. And why?”
“Pakistan sits on many critical fault lines. Terrorism is not a statistic for us. Our geopolitical location forces us to look to a future where the great global wars will be fought on the battleground of ideas,” he said.
He also mentioned the sacrifices made by Pakistan in the decade old war on terror and said “we have suffered more than 300 suicide bomb attacks by the forces that allegedly find sanctuary within our borders. We have hemorrhaged approximately $100 billion directly in the war effort and tens of billions more in lost foreign investment.”
“The war is being fought in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, yet Washington has invested almost nothing on our side of the border and hundreds of billions of dollars on the other side,” Zardari said.
