ISLAMABAD, April 23: Pakistan on Monday reiterated its offer to play a role in the Middle East peace process and expressed willingness to take `any step’ in this regard provided it had the assurance that its efforts would contribute to finding a just solution of the Palestine issue.
“Pakistan remains willing to play a role if such a role would help find a just solution to the Palestine issue,” Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam told the weekly briefing.
Referring to President Pervez Musharraf’s offer in a recent interview to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians, she said: “President’s comments were made in response to a question and they basically reflect the president’s willingness to take any step if there was an assurance that it would help in the resolution of the Palestine issue.”
Asked if Pakistan would go as far as recognising the state of Israel, she said: “This is all speculative. I am not going to get into that.”
The spokesperson was quick to point to the Middle East peace initiative launched by the president earlier this year when asked about the basis of his assertion that Pakistan could play a major role towards the settlement of the Palestinian issue.
She underlined that the initiative had been prompted by the deteriorating situation in the entire Middle East, particularly in Palestine and Iraq. Giving a positive spin to the president’s initiative that yielded no tangible results and ended up upsetting some Muslim countries instead, she noted that it had led to a meeting of foreign ministers of seven Muslim countries in Islamabad and the Arab League summit in Riyadh.
Highlighting the `positive developments’ that took place in the wake of the president’s initiative, she mentioned the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah as well as the visit of the Iranian president to Saudi Arabia.
Asked why Pakistan was so eager to play a role in the Middle East when apparently on one wanted it to do so, Ms Aslam said: “Pakistan is eager to
play a role because the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated and it directly impacts Pakistan. Also, a number of Arab and Muslim leaders requested the president to play a role.”
AFGHANISTAN: Confirming that President Musharraf would hold a trilateral meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Ankara at the initiative of the Turkish prime minister, she said it would either take place on April 29 or April 30. She saw it as another opportunity for the two leaders to interact with each other and to take forward the dialogue process.
When asked what made Pakistan optimistic about a breakthrough at the Ankara talks when the trilateral meeting hosted by US President George Bush last year could not help resolve the differences, she said: “It is always useful to maintain a dialogue.”
Answering a question, she said: “Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbours and Pakistan has stood by Afghanistan in times of adversity very consistently.”
She declared that Islamabad wanted to have good relations with Kabul, underlining that peace and security in Afghanistan was important for both the countries as well as the region.
According to her, the hostile statements emanating from Afghanistan reflect the lack of understanding about Pakistan’s position and its policy.
She told a questioner that members of Pakistan’s jirga commission would visit Afghanistan. However, she did not give any date for their visit.
She disagreed with an observation that the mechanism of the Tripartite Commission established to address the issue of border violations was not working. She reiterated that Pakistan would continue to take steps it deemed necessary to ensure that there was no cross-border movement which was detrimental to the interests of Pakistan and Afghanistan. She maintained that the measures taken by Pakistan to strengthen border controls were in response to persistent complaints about people crossing over to create trouble in Afghanistan.
However, she asserted that Afghanistan continued to face many internal problems, including lack of national reconciliation, insufficient reconstruction efforts, corruption, drug barons, warlords and other criminal elements which needed to be addressed inside Afghanistan.
INDIA: When her attention was drawn to a statement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and asked if it undermined the two-nation theory, the spokesperson said it could have been made about India’s own domestic situation.
“There is no need to be paranoid. Pakistan exists because we have the will to exist. We do not need to justify our existence to anyone. We should have that much confidence in ourselves,” she said.
When her comments were sought on the show-cause notice the Aaj TV had been issued by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), she said: “This is not an issue with which ministry of foreign affairs deals. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to raise it with ministry of information and with Pemra.”
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