Eliminating terrorism key to acquiring benefit from CPEC

President calls for new linguistic experiments to build mutual contacts between regional countries

Eliminating terrorism is key to benefitting from projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

This was stated by President Mamnoon Hussain at the fifth convocation of National University of Modern Languages (NUML) on Monday.

It is imperative to defeat terrorism and the extremist mindset in order to materialise the revolution of regional connectivity which Pakistan was accepting in the form of CPEC, said Mamnoon, who is also the chancellor of the varsity.

Addressing students, the president emphasised that there was no room for extremist conduct in Islamic teachings nor the Constitution. He added that people who leave the path of moderation are unforgivable and become completely astray.

Noting that while the stat apparatus was playing its role in eliminating extremist activities and their perpetrators, it was the foremost responsibility of the educated segments of society, particularly the youth, to reject and correct the misleading narrative.

Talking about the importance of languages, Mamnoon underscored the need for new linguistic experiments to facilitate mutual contacts between regional countries to ensure the success of CPEC. He added that the Urdu language provides an excellent basis for this.

With a large number of foreign traders, industrialists and people from different walks of life expected to start arriving in Pakistan soon as part of CPEC, he hoped that the new graduates of NUML would play their role in this regard.

In this regard, he noted that he had donated money to build an NUML centre by cutting costs at the President House. He urged NUML to establish ties with universities from China, Central Asia and Eastern Europe to facilitate mutual contacts.

Later, he handed out gold medals to the position holders.

As many as 182 students were conferred degrees while 15 gold medals were awarded to graduates of different programmes.

NUML Rector Major General (Retd) Ziauddin Najam, NUML Director General Brigadier Riaz Ahmed Gondal, Registrar, Deans, Directors, Heads of Departments, and a large number of students along with their parents attended the Convocation.

Earlier, Rector Najam said that the university had developed a first-of-its-kind Writing Resource Centre in the country to promote writing and research activities and to facilitate the academia.

Moreover, he said that NUML had established its own think tank, composed of former rectors, DGs, deans, directors and senior faculty members he added.

He also mentioned how under CPEC, NUML had established a centre in Xinjiang province of China to teach English and Urdu languages to the Chinese. Another regional campus of NUML has been established at Gwadar to teach the Chinese language.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2017.