Pakistan made a 'scapegoat' in terror war

NEW YORK - Reaffirming Pakistan’s commitment to fight extremists, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said his country was being made a ‘scapegoat’ for the ‘failures’ of the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan to contain the insurgency in the neighbouring country.

He also said that recent US military raids inside Pakistan’s tribal areas violated its sovereignty and threatens the gains made in the anti-terror fight. ‘I’m afraid that a relatively recent element in this already difficult war threatens to undo what we have already achieved’, he said in a speech at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School on Wednesday.

‘I am referring to US attacks in the Pakistani territory’.

‘US troops are going into Pakistan in hot pursuit to threaten the elements that threaten Pakistan. This is certainly one way of looking at this matter. However, the Pakistani public rightly sees the attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty’, the FM told a large gathering of students and faculty members.

‘It hurts us even more when the transgressor is our friend and ally, the US.If there are actions to be taken, those actions will be taken by Pakistan’.

The US actions risk further alienating the population of the tribal areas and the wider populace, he added.

‘The Pakistan public rightly sees such attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty’, he said.

‘We must not take any action that hardens the resolve of those already committed to violence’.

‘The struggle against terrorism is the defining struggle of our times’, he added.