Web Desk
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said that term of present government will expire on June 4, 2018 and the next general elections will be held in August next year.
“Whatever happens, elections will happen on time and in early August. Pakistan will, God willing, have a new government. Hopefully the same party (PML-N) will come to power,” he said in an interview with Saudi newspaper, Arab News.
He said that the days of Pakistan depending on the US to meet its military and other requirements are over.
“If one source dries up, we have no option but to go to another source. It may cost more, it may consume more resources, but we have to fight that war, and that’s what we emphasized to all the people that we met,” Abbasi added.
“Any sanctions or restraints… put on our systems only degrades our efforts to fight terror, and it affects the whole equation in this region,” he said.
“We have major US weapons systems in our military, but we’ve also diversified. We have Chinese and European systems. Recently, for the first time we inducted Russian attack helicopters.”
It has been two months since Abbasi assumed office after being voted in by Parliament via special elections on Aug. 1. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the ruling party, holds the numbers in Pakistan’s National Assembly, and Abbasi being a staunch loyalist and trusted comrade of Nawaz Sharif was the suitable choice.
He has hit the ground running, facing a barrage of domestic and international challenges including terrorism, an energy deficit, and economic and regional volatility.
“It’s a complex job,” he said, adding that governing a country with a ballooning population of over 207 million is no walk in the park.
“Pakistan is one of the largest countries in the world… It’s a nuclear power. We have a challenging neighborhood. There’s a war on terror in the country. There are issues in Afghanistan. There’s a very large foreign military presence there… We have a neighbor to the east with which we’ve had several wars. They (India) are also a nuclear power. We have a dispute. They occupied Kashmir, which is our territory… The economic challenge is (also) there.”
Pakistan wants peace in Afghanistan via a solution that “is owned and led by the Afghans,” said Abbasi, warning that Washington’s desire to include India would be detrimental.
“We don’t believe that injecting India into the Pakistan-US relationship will help resolve anything, especially in Afghanistan, where we don’t see any role for India. India has a relationship with the US. That is between them and the US.”
Pakistan wants an “equal relationship or partnership with the US, like every other nation,” he said.
It wishes to work with the US “to resolve regional” and “global issues… ranging from the economy to nuclear” matters.
