KARACHI: The Foreign Minister, Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada, said yesterday that Pakistan would continue balancing its interests between the Western and Communist Powers and renewed the Government’s pledge to provide a meeting ground for the United States and the People’s Republic of China to discuss their differences.

The Foreign Minister in an interview reiterated Pakistan’s stand of favouring negotiations to settle the Viet-Nam conflict and said: “If asked we will not hesitate to play any role we can in the interest of world peace.”

Mr Pirzada said that Pakistan sees “nothing inconsistent in our relations with both the United States and China. Both China and the United States realise this,” he added.

The Foreign Minister said that much misunderstanding on this point had been removed last December when President Ayub Khan and President Lyndon Johnson had met in Washington.

He said President Ayub had also received President Johnson’s assurances “for preservation of Pakistan’s independence and integrity”.

“We certainly welcome this pledge,” the Foreign Minister said and added that Pakistan takes it to mean that the United States would help defend Pakistan against any aggression.

“I have the feeling that the United States could have played a more positive role” in Indo-Pakistan war last September and “that is putting it mildly”.

He described the Indo-Pakistan war as a low point in US-Pakistan relations but said that things “have changed for the better” and he was “satisfied for the present and in the present circumstances our relations with the United States are good”.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2016