The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday said it was amazed by the statement of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that “Pakistan's struggles are our struggles.”
The statement was made during Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi's visit to Washington in “utter disregard for facts and history,” party spokesperson Tarun Vijay said here.
According to him, it flew in the face of analyses by various think tanks in the U.S., where the predominant view was that Taliban chief Osama Bin Laden was hiding in the north-western parts of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, that his followers had found shelter in Pakistan, and that Pakistan's overall attitude towards the Taliban had not changed despite its so-called war against terrorism on its western frontier.
He charged that billions of dollars in aid being poured by Washington into Islamabad were being used not only to fund the war against terror on the border with Afghanistan, but also on the western side of the country, to fund anti-India terror attacks. And the U.S. cannot be unaware of this, it added.
Mr. Vijay wondered whether Pakistan's known support for terror attacks on India from its territory were part of the “joint struggle” of Islamabad and Washington that Ms. Clinton had referred to.
He also said it was time the U.S. “stopped hyphenating” India and Pakistan just as it does not hyphenate India and China. India, he reminded the U.S., was a democratic country and a growing economic power. It cannot be compared to or hyphenated with dictatorial regimes. The hyphenation of the two countries was a “joke,” Mr. Vijay said.
He charged New Delhi with bending before Washington and damaging national pride. Recently, the way the U.S. had back-tracked on giving India access to David Headley, who pleaded guilty to being part of the 26/11 terror plot, was nothing short of a “slap in the face” of the government.
