ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan still favours mending ties with the United States despite a diplomatic row which began in October last after the administration of President Joe Biden took the decision to downgrade the historic relationship.
Months after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August last year, the United States used a public event in arch-rival India to lay out in blunt terms the new parameters of Islamabad-Washington relations, stressing there would be no equivalence with its deepening ties to India.
“We don’t see ourselves building a broad relationship with Pakistan, and we have no interest in returning to the days of hyphenated India-Pakistan,” Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, told a gathering in the port city of Mumbai. “That’s not where we are. That’s not where we’re going to be.”
Months later, in April, Khan was ousted from office in April through a contentious vote of no-confidence which Khan blamed on the United States — a charge Washington has repeatedly denied.
In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said “he no longer blamed the US” for the confidence vote and wanted “dignified” ties with Washington if he returned to office in the coming general elections.
Referring to the circumstances around his removal, Khan said “it was over”. “As far as I’m concerned it’s over, it’s behind me. The Pakistan I want to lead must have good relationships with everyone, especially the United States,” he said.
“Our relationship with the US has been as of a master-servant relationship, or a master-slave relationship, and we’ve been used like a hired gun. But for that I blame my own governments more than the US,” the Times quoted the former prime minister as saying.
Following a rise in popularity due in part to his anti-American rhetoric, many observers now predict that Khan and his party might witness record success in the next general elections due to be held next year.
Khan is leading an anti-government march, with convoys arriving from across Pakistan, on Islamabad, and is insistent on “not returning until targets are achieved”. The PTI chairman demands a date for the snap elections.
The long march was paused last week after Khan was targeted in an attempted assassination in Wazirabad.
