US is wrong to think India will contain China: PM Imran Khan
US is wrong to think India will contain China: PM Imran Khan
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that Pakistan expects the US to be even handed in its approach to the South Asian region. The US thinks that India will contain China but that is a completely flawed premise. India is a threat to its neighbors, including China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
He expressed these views in an interview with a German news outlet on Friday.
Talking about the coronavirus, he said that almost half of Pakistan’s population lives on daily or weekly wages, which is why we used the smart lockdown strategy. We kept the agriculture sector open and quickly reopened the construction sector as it employs the most people in the urban areas, he added.
Pakistan is conducting around 180,000 to 200,000 coronavirus tests per week and the national coordination team is keeping close tabs on the situation, the PM said.
When asked about the upcoming US election, Imran Khan said that Joe Biden is seemingly favored in the polls but he did not count out Donald Trump as anything could happen due to his unpredictability.
He said that we want evenhanded treatment from the US with respect to India, especially with the dispute in Kashmir. He said the US would be ill-advised to think that India will contain China in the region. India is a threat to its neighbors, having the most extremist and racist government on the subcontinent. It is a fascist state, inspired by the Nazis, Khan said.
On Pakistan taking part in the war on terror, the PM said that Pakistan had nothing to do with the terror attacks on 9/11, yet it was pushed into the war because of US pressure, which Pervez Musharraf failed to deal with.
Talking about the US-Taliban peace negotiations and Pakistan’s vital role in them, Imran Khan said that after Afghanistan, the country that wants peace the most is Pakistan. It has lost 70,000 people in the conflict and its tribal areas have been devastated with half the population becoming internally displaced.
He said that Pakistan has no favorite among the hopefuls of power in Afghanistan. Our only interest is that the future government in Kabul does not allow India to operate from there against Pakistan, he added.
On China, the PM said that China has made remarkable progress, it has taken 700 million people out of poverty within the short period of 40 years. This is the model I want to emulate in Pakistan, he said.
He said that countries aren’t poor because of a lack of resources. It’s because of corruption among the leadership. As we know from the Panama Papers, the same is true for Pakistani politicians. Millions of dollars went into properties in the most expensive areas in London, siphoned off from this country, Khan said.
He criticized the opposition, saying that it wants to blackmail him into ending the corruption cases but that will never happen. The opposition has banded together because they fear that if Pakistan is stabilized, they will all end up in jail because of huge corruption cases, he said.
