NEW YORK - Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has reaffirmed Pakistan's demand for a US apology over the deadly NATO raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at Salala if Washington wants the supply routes into landlocked Afghanistan reopened.
Ms Khar challenged the Obama administration to live up to America's democratic ideals by respecting the will of Pakistan's elected legislature. "A representative Parliament of 180 million people has spoken on one subject," she told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview published Tuesday. "[This is] something which should have been forthcoming the day this incident happened, and what a partnership not only demands, but requires."
The interview was conducted in Doha during the May 29-31 US-Islamic World Forum organized by The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank.
The Islamabad-Washington relationship is now at its lowest ebb, and with US elections in November, President Obama is unlikely to apologise to Pakistan and make himself vulnerable to attacks from his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, Foreign Policy said.
A NATO summit in Chicago ended two weeks ago without a deal on the NATO supply lines. But talks between the two sides are continuing.
"We're making diligent progress," US State Department Spokesman told a news briefing in Washington on Monday.
Khar however said that despite the political challenges, the United States should live up to its principles of doing "what we consider to be right rather than what is more popular."
And after all, she argued the dangers of operating on purely political consideration goes both ways. The foreign minister noted that Pakistan also has political obstacles of its own.
"For us in Pakistan the most popular thing to do right now is not to open NATO supply routes at all. It is to close them forever," she said.
"If I were a political advisor to the prime minister, this is what I would advise him to do. But I'm not advising him to do that... because what is at stake is much more important for Pakistan than just winning an election."
In the wake of a New York Times article laying out how Obama personally guided the drone war on Pakistani soil, Khar criticized the use of drones as counterproductive.
"If you are creating 10 more targets for every target you take, are you doing a service or a disservice to your eventual goal of winning the war?" she asked.
The foreign minister, speaking in the context of Pakistani parliamentary recommendations on relations with the United States, contends the US should come up with something "so we can say that yes, the aspirations and the will of the people of Pakistan are respected."
According to the report, the latest challenge for the US-Pakistani relationship is embodied by the sentencing of Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped CIA to track down Osama bin Laden.
A Pakistani tribal court sentenced Afridi to 33 years in prison not for his work with the CIA, but for his alleged links to the militant group Lashkar-i-Islam.
"Clearly, my advice at this point is that we don't need to blow this out of proportion at all," Khar says, emphasizing that Afridi has two appeals of judgment available to him. "But I would certainly not want this particular issue to cast a shadow over the relationship."
Asked whether her gender and youth helped her rebuild the relationship with the United States, she said with a smile, "I don't know. If the last six months are anything to go by, it hasn't helped me."