Pakistan is keen to have a “proper relationship” with the US similar to Islamabad’s all-weather ties with China rather than being humiliated and treated like a “hired gun”, Prime Minister Imran Khan has said.
Prime Minister Khan, in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday, said: “I would never want to have a relationship where Pakistan is treated like a hired gun – given money to fight someone else’s war,” Khan said, referring to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union and the ongoing war on terror.
“It not only cost us human lives, devastation of our tribal areas, but it also cost us our dignity,” he said.
When asked to elaborate on the ideal nature of relationship that he would like to have with Washington, Khan added: “For instance, our relationship with China is not one-dimensional. It’s a trade relationship between two countries. We want a similar relationship with the US.”
The prime minister said Pakistan was not “hedging” towards China, rather it was Washington’s attitude which had brought a change in the bilateral relationship.
The cricketer-turned-politician rejected the notion that he was “anti-US”, saying that disagreeing with Washington’s policies did not make him “anti-American”.
“This is a very imperialistic approach. ‘You’re either with me or against me’,” he said.
When asked if he wanted relations between Pakistan and the US to “warm up”, Khan responded: “Who would not want to be friends with a superpower?”
“The last thing we want is to have chaos in Afghanistan. There should be a settlement this time. In 1989, what happened was the Taliban emerged out of the chaos,” he said.
Khan condemned the 2011 covert US operation in Abbottabad that killed Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the Pakistani garrison city.
Khan said it was “humiliating” that the US did not trust Pakistan to kill the most wanted terrorist.
“It was humiliating that we were losing our soldiers and civilians and [suffering terrorist] bomb attacks because we were participating in the US war, and then our ally did not trust us to kill bin Laden,” he regretted and added that the US “should have tipped off Pakistan”.