Pak need not suspect US ties with India: American scholar

Islamabad, May 20 (ANI): A senior fellow for US Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution and a former director of European Affairs at National Security Council under US President Bill Clinton has said that Pakistan should not suspect Washington's growing relations between India.

Dr. Philip Gordon said that ties between the U.S. and India should be simply seen as America wanting to be a friend to the world's biggest democracy and having access and exposure to the important South Asian free market.

Speaking at a roundtable here, Gordon was quoted by the Dawn as saying that, "It is in America's own interests to have good relations with such a free market. It does not mean we give preference to India over Pakistan, but the US foreign policy can't revolve merely around a single country no matter how important that country is."

He also claimed that many people in Pakistan looked at the present India-US relations with glasses of religion and consider it as America's anti-Islam agenda, which was wrong.

Such an impression could not be substantiated as the war on terror had nothing to do with Islam as religion, he added.

Replying to a question on the Taliban, Gordon said the Taliban could not be termed as representatives of Pakhtuns and giving them any chance to re- emerge would not only put the security of the region at risk but, in fact, the whole world at risk.

"The Taliban have been tested in Afghanistan and, we have seen how regressive such people could be when in power. We had tried our best to separate Taliban from the Al-Qaeda but it proved futile," he observed.
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By ANI Sunday May 20, 12:46 PM

Ironically, none of the dozen veteran diplomats who had gathered around a huge wooden table could convince Dr Gordon that Taliban were a legitimate part of Afghan crisis.

Explaining US policy towards Iran, Dr. Gordon said that a nuclear Iran was a threat to its neighbours and could put the whole region into a race for nuclear technology. Iran could even transfer its nuclear technology to its neighbours.

He said the US was against the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline because of the designs of Iran to become a nuclear power, which, if materialised, could destabilise the whole region.

The US still saw Pakistan as a vital partner in the War on Terror and wanted long-term relations with it, he said. (ANI)