PM in New York

Shehbaz Sharif is in the US to attend the UN General Assembly session

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari have been pleading with world leaders in New York to help Pakistan recover from some of the worst floods in history. Both men are in the US to attend the UN General Assembly session which began earlier this week. Notable among those that the PM met on the sidelines of the assembly of world leaders was President Joe Biden of the US. The meeting with Biden was not one-on-one, limiting the value of possible discussion topics, but it was helpful to the effect that it did elicit an assurance from the leader of the world’s sole superpower on extending help for the flood-marooned population of Pakistan.

Prime Minister Shehbaz also met with several other leaders of EU countries including French President Emmanuel Macron, who assured that his country would help Pakistan revive its economy and help us recover from the floods. France has also offered to hold an international donors conference in the coming months to help raise funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction in Pakistan. Shehbaz was reportedly very cordial and appreciative of the French leader and his country, which was among the first to provide flood aid, despite the bilateral relationship having taken a downturn during the PTI’s term at the helm. After several protests by religious groups over France’s ‘radical’ secular policies, former prime minister Imran Khan absolutely froze ties by reportedly refusing to take a call from Macron, who wanted to thank him for Pakistan’s assistance in evacuating French and other foreign nationals from Afghanistan after the Taliban took Kabul.

World Bank and IMF leaders also assured Pakistan of additional support, and Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates offered his continuing support for polio vaccination and other health initiatives while expanding disaster relief support through the Gates Foundation. This is where one feels Pakistan is fortunate to have the UNGA session — a grand assembly of the who’s who of the world — coming close on the heels of the flood devastation in Pakistan, providing its leaders an opportunity to sensitise the world on the undue brunt of the anti-climate activity of rich nations that the developing countries have had to bear.

Foreign Minister Bilawal, meanwhile, was on something of a media blitz, making direct appeals to the world to help Pakistan recover from a tragedy of “truly apocalyptic and biblical proportions”. He also lamented that the tough decision-making that led to economic stabilisation and the restoration of the IMF programme had literally been washed away. Bilawal also told reporters about the situation in India and Occupied Kashmir, both of which he said were “increasingly becoming a Hindu-supremacist...at the expense of its Christian and Muslim minorities”. The young foreign minister also noted that India’s illegal withdrawal of Kashmir’s special status under the Indian constitution left Pakistan with “very little space to engage”. However, the country’s top diplomat also acknowledged that there is still a glimmer of hope for relations to improve, as younger Indians and Pakistanis “want to see two neighbours living in peace, side by side”.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2022.

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