PAKISTAN’S PRESIDENT will press ahead with a visit to the UK this week in spite of widespread anger among his country’s leadership about remarks by David Cameron, the British prime minister, accusing Pakistan of “looking both ways” on exporting terror.
Asif Ali Zardari left for Paris yesterday for meetings with French leaders, and plans to proceed to Britain tomorrow. “The president decided to proceed on this trip as he felt it was necessary to meet with British prime minister David Cameron and present Pakistan’s viewpoint,” a Pakistani government official said.
The decision will limit the diplomatic fallout from a stand-off with Britain, which has already seen Pakistan threaten to suspend intelligence sharing at a time when Islamabad’s co-operation is viewed as essential to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end.
In what is seen as a diplomatic ace-card for Islamabad, Lieut General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director-general of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, cancelled a visit to the UK due to begin today to hold high level security consultations with British intelligence officials.
The decision to cancel Gen Pasha’s visit “is a direct response to the uncalled for and completely unwarranted remarks by David Cameron”, a Pakistani cabinet minister said. “The British prime minister should get himself a reality check before making such irresponsible statements.”
Britain’s military and intelligence services have built close ties with the pre-eminent security establishment in Pakistan since the New York terrorist attacks in 2001 and the subsequent bombings on the London Underground. The two sides also regularly exchange intelligence on Afghanistan including information that Pakistani officials claim is geared to help protect British troops.
Mr Cameron’s remarks about Pakistan’s attitude to terror – made during a speech at an IT outsourcing company in Bangalore last week – swiftly became one of the most noteworthy events of a visit billed as a trade mission.
The comments were seized upon by the Indian media, which is always alert to the intense rivalry between India and Pakistan that has led to three wars since the end of British rule 63 years ago.
British diplomats in New Delhi said Mr Cameron’s remarks were deliberate, and intended to show that the new prime minister would boldly “call a spade a spade”. They were also intended to emphasise the difference between fast-growing, democratic India and terror-stricken Pakistan, which did not have the capacity to host the kind of high-profile delegation Mr Cameron led to Bangalore and New Delhi, the diplomats said.
This kind of tacit comparison has delighted India’s leadership. Senior Indian diplomats said they were impressed by Mr Cameron, saying New Delhi and London were beginning to talk the same language. Now they want him to follow up his words with “substance” and said they were seeking from Britain something similar to what the US had achieved with the Indo-US nuclear deal that ended decades of isolation for India’s nuclear programme.
Gen Pasha’s withdrawal from this week’s talks is a reminder that Pakistan can play a whip hand in Afghanistan, where 10,000 British troops are part of a Nato-led force struggling to bring stability and peace.
Demonstrators on the streets of Pakistan’s cities burnt effigies of Mr Cameron this weekend, as Mr Zardari weighed up whether or not to continue with the British trip in view of both Mr Cameron’s comments and floods that killed more than 1,000 people in the country’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
Senior Pakistani analysts said Islamabad prized its relationship with Britain, which ranks alongside the US, Saudi Arabia and China as one of its closest allies.
They put Mr Cameron’s remarks in Bangalore down to a lack of experience about the treacherous nuclear-armed divide between India and its neighbour.
“I am not sure if we can say this relationship is heading towards a long-term break,” said Maj Gen (retired) Mehmood Durrani, the former national security adviser. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)