LONDON: Pakistan’s top diplomat in Britain has criticized the new US strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan and defended his government’s agreement to impose Islamic law in the Swat Valley.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner (ambassador) in London, said his personal view was that US President Barack Obama’s plan for fighting Taleban insurgents in Afghanistan, which broadens the focus to Pakistan, was the “wrong strategy.”
“Pakistan is a semi-developed country and Afghanistan is not at all developed. They have never had any rule of law in their country,” he told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday. “You can’t club the two countries (together),” he said. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Pakistan’s government on Wednesday of abdicating to the Taleban by agreeing to impose Islamic law in the Swat Valley and said the country now posed a “mortal threat” to the world.
Hasan said Clinton was “rather overstretching the issue.” “We will not allow Pakistani territory to be abdicated to anybody. We will fight for every inch ... and hopefully when President Zardari goes to the United States he will take it up with Hillary Clinton because we need your (US) assistance,” he said.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is due to discuss the new strategy with Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington on May 6-7.
