ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria said on Thursday that the US could not scapegoat Pakistan for its failures in Afghanistan.
During the weekly briefing, the Foreign Office spokesman rejected allegations by US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen Joseph Dunford about Pakistan’s policy against terrorism, and said that the US was trying to blame Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan. “Pakistan has done enough to erase the footprint of terrorism from its soil through indiscriminate counter terrorism operations against all terrorist outfits. The general also mentioned about sanctuaries in the historical context,” the spokesman said.
“In this regard, I will quote Hillary Clinton’s statement before a Congressional hearing during 2009, in which she said: ‘The people (Taliban) we are fighting today, we (the US) funded 20 years ago, to beat Soviet Union. Let’s be careful about what we sow because we will harvest. We abandoned Pakistan and they had to deal with these elements (Taliban)’,” the spokesman said.
The spokesperson claimed that there were no safe-havens in Pakistan. “The sanctuaries people talk about are located in the ungoverned spaces of Afghanistan. In the wake of President Trump’s policy review on Afghanistan and South Asia, Pakistan, at the highest level, has clearly underlined that Pakistan should not be made a scapegoat for failures in Afghanistan,” he said.
Nafees Zakaria rejected US Gen Joseph Dunford’s allegations that Pakistani intelligence agencies had ties to militant groups.
To another question, the spokesperson said that India, over the years, had played the role of a spoiler in Afghanistan. “Under the garb of development assistance, India has used Afghan soil to carry out subversive activities inside Pakistan. RAW has developed a clandestine nexus with terrorist groups based in Afghanistan, like TTP, JuA and ETIM. These groups are being used to foment unrest and orchestrate terrorist attacks in Pakistan and other regional countries,” he said.
“Indian-sponsored terrorist groups in Afghanistan and their directed terrorist activities inside Pakistan are no secret. There is proof of Indian use of Afghan soil against Pakistan. People from within India are on record to have admitted that the TTP, JuA and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan are Indian assets, which they use to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan,” he said.
Zakaria added that Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif had taken up the issue of human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir during his visit to the US.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, after meeting Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday, had said Pakistan was critical for the long-term stability of South Asia. “We want Pakistan’s government to be stable, peaceful. Many of the same issues they were struggling inside Pakistan were our issues. So we think there was an opportunity to strengthen that relationship,” he had said.
Pakistan’s relation with the US is “extraordinarily important”, he added.
The FO also accused India of being involved in “economic terrorism” and a plot to sabotage economic activity in Pakistan by attacking China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
“Indian occupation forces continue to violate ceasefire on Line of Control (LoC) and deliberately target civilians,” the FO spokesman said, recalling that two civilians were killed and two injured in one such incident in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Wednesday.
“India has committed around 1,000 ceasefire violations this year, which had resulted in deaths of 45 civilians and injured 155 others, including children and women. “Indian crimes against unarmed Kashmiris, who were seeking their right to self-determination, as promised to them in the UNSC Resolutions on Kashmir dispute, warrant strong punitive actions against India,” he said.
Published in Daily Times, October 6th 2017.
