NEW YORK: Pakistan is ready to work with the United States to effectively manage its porous border with Afghanistan and facilitate a peaceful settlement in the war-torn country, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said on Wednesday. He firmly rejected claims that Pakistan fostered militant groups such as the Haqqani network.

“Don’t blame us for the Haqqanis and don’t blame us for the Hafiz Saeeds,” Mr Asif said while speaking at the Asia Society forum on Monday night, referring to the Taliban faction and the head of banned Jamaatud Dawa.

“These were the people who were your darlings just 20 to 30 years back. They were being dined and wined in the White House and now you say, ‘Go to hell, Pakistanis, because you are nurturing these people’,” said Mr Asif, who is in New York to attend the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In his address at the Asia Society, a non-profit organisation that focuses on educating the world about Asia, the minister was discussing Pakistan’s vision for and approach towards regional peace and development.

Foreign minister tells US to stop blame game as Haqqanis were ‘your darlings’ at one time

Speaking at the forum, Mr Asif underlined that Pakistan has suffered immensely from conflict and instability in Afghanistan, and it would continue to bear the brunt unless this cycle was reversed.

Therefore, no country other than Pakistan could have a larger stake in a peaceful and stable Afgha­nistan, he said, but regretted that the situation in the neighbouring country was getting worse.

“Ungoverned spaces, violence and drugs and narcotics trade” are on the rise in Afghanistan, he said. “This is a source of grave concern for Pakistan.”

The minister said Pakis­tan acknowledged and supported the US desire to bring an end to the Afghan war, and was ready to help in any way to achieve peace and stability in its backyard.

But “scapegoating Pakis­tan for all the Afghan ills is neither fair nor accurate. This will only help forces that we are trying to fight collectively”, he said.

Mr Asif reiterated the need for support from the United States to counter such outfits, and acknowledged that the US had helped Pakistan build capacity and overcome challenges.

The foreign minister, however, made it clear that there were obvious limits to what Pakistan could do, stressing that the country could not take overall responsibility for Afghanistan’s peace and security and be asked to achieve what the combined strength of some of the most powerful and richest countries could not accomplish.

“Effective border management, frankly, is the key,” the minister said, adding: “More needs to be done on the Afghan side of the border where terrorist elements are finding easy safe havens.”

Underlining the need for collaboration, he said the emergence of new threats, including the militant Isla­mic State group, demanded ever-greater coordination and stronger partnerships between like-minded countries to put up a united front to counter “these dark forces of exclusion and extremism”.

Talking about Pakistan’s sour relations with India, he said that a new initiative was needed to bring India and Pakistan to the negotiating table. He stressed the need to discuss all issues, including the decades-old Kashmir dispute.

“Peace in the neighbourhood is impossible to achieve unless relations with India improve,” he said.

He said Pakistan had reached out to India to seek the normalisation of relations and resolution of all issues through dialogue and engagement, but “unfortunately, our gestures of goodwill have not been reciprocated by India”.

Accusing India of choosing confrontation instead of dialogue, the minister said unprovoked violations along the Line of Control and Working Boundary, escalating political rhetoric, excessive use of force against unarmed civilians in India-held Kashmir and harassment of minorities, particularly Muslims, in India did not bode well for peace and reconciliation in South Asia.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2017