The secretary’s mention of international law, sovereignty, national pride, self-respect and independence didn’t wash.
ISLAMABAD: This is with respect to your editorial of May 6 titled “Laugh or cry?” on the foreign secretary’s press conference of May 5.
The secretary tried to, rather belatedly, justify the position of the Foreign Office and the establishment on the death of Osama bin Laden. And with due respect, I believe that he failed to dispel the growing confusion surrounding the US operation that killed bin Laden.
The secretary’s mention of international law, sovereignty, national pride, self-respect and independence didn’t wash. Nobody is going to buy these cliches anymore and, as he said them, it seemed quite clear that he was not really aware of what the world was talking about and thinking of Pakistan.
If the Foreign Office presumably agrees that terrorism is our enemy number one, what stops it from advocating a policy of peace and reconciliation in conflict-scarred South Asia? A South Asia mired in Cold War stereotypes cannot cope with the difficulties generated by the likes of Raymond Davis and Osama bin Laden.
The self-contradictory arguments of the foreign secretary were based on a failed paradigm which has let us down time and again in the past.
BA Malik
Former ambassador
Published in The Express Tribune, May 7th, 2011.
