ISLAMABAD: Pakistan wants US President Barack Obama to review his Afghan policy which even his generals fear may not work, says a senior Pakistani defence official. The official, who visited Washington last week, said he had come with a message: “Pakistan wants the president to take another look.”
On Thursday, Gen Joseph Dunford, the commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, told Congress that those in uniform did not necessarily support President Obama’s decision to set a deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. “I think all of us in uniform, including Afghans, would have preferred for that to be a bit more ambiguous.”
President Obama has announced plans to end US combat missions in Afghanistan by 2014 and withdraw all troops by December 2016. The Associated Press reported that the Pakistani defence official told its correspondent that Pakistan felt “the entire basis of the (US) drawdown has not been met.”
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to comment publicly on the US policy, said the withdrawal plan was based on having a peaceful transition from outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to a new government, Afghanistan signing the security agreement and assurances the Afghan security forces will be able to hold the country together once the international forces leave.
India and Pakistan commerce ministers to meet
ISLAMABAD: Two months after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi, their commerce ministers will meet on July 24 at the eighth meeting of the South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta), ministerial council in Thimpu, Bhutan.
When asked for confirmation, the spokesperson at the Foreign Office remarked: “They will be meeting”, without giving any details and nor has there been any statement on this very important meetings between the two neighbours, given that trade is ‘high’ on the agenda of the Sharif government. This will be a first meet for Khurram Dastgir Khan, one of the new generation cabinet ministers and Nirmala Sitharaman who is also Indian Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs.internews
