June 23, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 22,1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

ISLAMABAD, June 22: Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said on Sunday that Pakistan understood that growing relations between China and India were not at the expense of Pakistan-China friendship.

Talking to APP here, he said: “We have followed the developments on rapprochement between China and India.”

When asked to comment on Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s six-day visit to China, the spokesman said: “Pakistan and China have very close and long-standing relationship.”

The successive leadership and generations of Pakistan and China had worked with each other, he said, adding: “We completely trust each other. We have followed the developments on rapprochement between China and India.”

He said Pakistan understood the growing relations between China and India were not at the expense of Pakistan-China relations. “These relationships have different trajectories,” he added.

The spokesman said China had played a constructive and positive role in South Asia and Beijing’s relations with South Asian Nations, particularly with Islamabad, had been a factor of peace and stability in the region.

He recalled that Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali was the first world head of the government received by top Chinese leadership — President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and an elder state leader Jiang Zemin — after the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the transition of the leadership.

This, he said, was a great honour for Pakistan and it reflected the close understandingbetween the two countries.—APP