Assessment of recent visits of US and Chinese dignitaries
A session titled ‘Assessment of Recent Visit of US Secretary of State and Chinese Foreign Minister to Pakistan’ was held at IPS on September 18, 2018.
The session was addressed by Ambassador (r) Tajammul Altaf, senior research associate at IPS, who analyzed the recently made visits of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi to Pakistan in light of the country’s foreign policy development.
The speaker said that ever-since the Trump administration took incumbency of US’ presidential office, Pak-US relations have been in continuous decline as the trust deficit has kept both states on different sides of table.
The new Pakistani government however expressed interest in establishing balanced relations with the U.S., following which the US secretary of state Mike Pompeo made a visit to Pakistan. In his five-hour meeting with Pakistani civil-military leadership, Pompeo shared various US concerns, especially urging Pakistan to rethink over US-Afghan policy – which is now being planned to be sorted through political resolution instead of by the means of war – while sharing that even the US do not plan to stay in Afghanistan for long.
Speaking of Pak-US relations, Altaf shared that there was another meeting scheduled to be held in Washington DC for resettlement of issues; Pompeo however has already expressed the US’ viewpoint in this regard by stating that withholding the backing of terrorists would be the only way for Pakistan to garner US’ support.
The speaker pointed that while it was encouraging to see that the civil-military leadership of Pakistan appeared on the same page during Pompeo’s visit, the absence of a joint press conference with the US secretary of state at the end of the meeting shows there exists a clear drift in the relations of the two countries.
Talking about the visit of Chinese foreign minister to Pakistan, Altaf said that the foreign ministers of both countries have reaffirmed their commitment to the timely completion of CPEC projects, alongside discussing ways to ameliorate the bilateral trade relations further. The opportunities for collaboration in the areas of defence and security were also discussed by the counterparts during their meeting.
The former diplomat further shared that later in his three-day visit, the Chinese representative also met Khusro Bakhtiar, the federal minister for planning, development and reforms in Pakistan, and discussed various means of fostering development-oriented cooperation between the two countries, especially in the areas of drinking water, sanitation and provision of houses.
