ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary on Foreign Affairs Member of National Assembly, Andleeb Abbas Thursday said Pakistan needed to counter concocted Indian narrative against it which has been developed diplomatically during the last 14 year.

Speaking at a seminar on “Foreign Policy of Pakistan in Context of Strategic Coercion” organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), she said it was a tough and challenging task for Pakistan to foil over a decade long Indian spurious propaganda and to resume the cold relations between the two countries that remained stagnant for the last 10 years.

Andleeb said around the world most of the global intellectual think tanks, universities and resource academia included Indian nationals who were serving the cause to lobby against Pakistan at every forum.

She gave the stance that Finance Minister Asad Umar during his interview in BBC’s programme HARD talk mentioned Kulbhushan Jadhav’s name clearly as the perpetrator of terrorism in Balochistan which the channel had omitted owing to the great lobby working there to control such things.

She said our social media campaigns and public outburst over the matter took the media corporation to step down from their point.

“Beat the enemy without fighting is diplomacy and we are on to it. It’s high time for us to work harder and unflinchingly to serve the purpose,” she remarked.

The parliamentary secretary underscored that prior to their government’s charge in the office, the former governments had ruled out strategic coercion from the foreign policy. “When I have charge of my office around six months ago what I see is that India is actively making propaganda and terrorism against Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s response as cold as ever, Iran turning other way around and what we see from US President Trump are tweets calling Pakistan the trouble maker in the region in particular and in the world in general,” she added.

She said that Pakistan was heading towards soft power diplomacy which was acceptable and subtle unlike the hard power which was imposing military and economic aggression. It had shortcomings and was not tolerable in the world, she maintained.

Former Ambassador Muhammad Ayaz Wazir said that there had been shift and change in the behaviours of the Indian leadership after the recent tension scenario. Prime Imran Khan, despite many of my arguments with him, had made him proud through his conduct and strategy dealing with the recent conflict started by India.

Senior Defence Analyst, Gen (R) Amjab Shoaib said after the Pulwama incident Prime Minister Imran Khan extended his full support unlike India for evidence based investigation which was not responded by the Indian leadership. After any terrorist attack in India, they had blamed Pakistan for it but on demand for any evidence and proof of their claims, they failed to provide any concrete substance, he remarked.

“Our lack of credibility at the global level has harmed us a lot and it is the fundamental weakness in our foreign policy that we failed to prove our innocence before the international community. It is agonizing to see that we lost over 20,000 of our soldiers and over triple of this number our civilians’ blood has been spilled. The world still denies our efforts and calls our country a terrorist state. Unless we regain our integrity among the comity of nations then we would be able to curb Indian propaganda and narrative,” he said.

General (R) Amjad said during this hybrid war they need not only to tackle enemy’s false perceptions and propaganda rather the voices within the country against the state.

In the International Court of Justice during Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case hearing, our former Prime Minister’s statement was being quoted against us which was regrettable and seriously hampering our diplomatic endeavours to earn global trust, he added.

Executive Director, SDPI Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri said enduring peace was one of the major prerequisite for sustainable development and securing peace required restraints, resilience and patience.

He said Pakistan was not only facing traditional coercion of ‘Do More’, but also facing economic coercion in the form of IMF conditions and restrictions. He said they might require to put our house in order and should take measure to correct our economic course to avoid such coercions.

The hybrid warfare was now one of the major challenges of Pakistan’s foreign policy and to ward off this challenge, they have to prepare themselves.

For Pakistan, in view of current serious tensions between two nuclear rivals, the glass was half full on the foreign policy front where all five permanent members of United Nation’s Security Council were not taking sides, instead asking both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint.

“Our common enemy is poverty, hunger, food security, climate change, inequality, unemployment and lack of drinking water and safe sanitation. The region and especially both nuclear rivals require collective action to fight the common enemy,” he maintained.

Source: https://www.brecorder.com/2019/02/28/477914/pak-needs-to-confront-indian-concocted-narrative-developed-diplomatically/