Pakistan’s permanent envoy to United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, has said that winning Security Council seat has given Pakistan a say in the decision-making process regarding the withdrawal of US and ISAF forces from Afghanistan, along with other global issues. During an exclusive interview with Express News 24/7 Haroon also said that the victory is a paradigm shift. “We have worked our relationships with America on single track basis called bilateral understanding in which we have had very bad failure,” the Pakistani envoy stated. While stating that being an ally in the war on terror did not prove fruitful for Pakistan, the envoy said that we have many so-called allies who don’t talk to us but talk down at us.
He said that our opponents in UN were going into all sorts of “secret diplomacy where discussion is more bullying than discussion and things don’t appear on the table”. He further said that we have paid $150 billion for the Afghan war and America has helped us with not more than $3 billion. The country got $8 billion in terms of services but that was not help, he noted.
“If we have got $3 or $4 billion in help and the rest is for payment of services, etc, and we have spent $150 billion on the Afghan war, it is an unnatural and unequal contribution. So the bilateral talks, I believe, have not produced results for Pakistan,” he stated. The ambassador further said that the second track is opening and people of Pakistan must realise that it is a point where we will be eye-ball to eye-ball with people and nobody would be able to talk down at us but we would be on the world stage rationalising what is possible and what should be done on a fair and equitable basis.
He said that moving to the multilateral track as a result of the UNSC seat and having say in the global matters will also immediately remove the intensity of pressure on Pakistan. He said that the great thing from the second track is that we will have friendship of China and Russia and will be having two major players of Shanghai Convention on our back.
“I say the paradigm shift from bilateral to multilateral is going to prove very beneficial to Pakistan. Mark my words today,” the envoy asserted. He further said that Pakistan’s bid for the UNSC seat faced opposition because the country’s opponents did not want us to have a say in the process of NATO and ISAF troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, as the matter will come to the Security Council where the country will have a say at the table.
He added that having a presence in UNSC will also enable Pakistan to counter any propaganda against the country. Haroon also said that Pakistan owed India for this landmark success (winning UNSC seat) as it would not have been possible without their support. India, he said, went out of the way in supporting Pakistan by not only voting for the country but also urging other countries to do so. Haroon said that Pakistan needed 129 votes to win against Kyrgyzstan and we got this number of votes as a result of diplomatic efforts that the country had started since he took charge of his position around three and a half years back.
He said that the election was a great challenge for Pakistan right from the beginning because the signs were extremely discouraging at the time he started working on the issue as those who should have supported us in UN were actually opposing us. “We got elected to the UNESCO in a very big way and then of course capitol with a lot of our friends deserting us and the Western world mostly standing against us we won Security Council seat for Pakistan,” he explained. The countries that supported Pakistan, the ambassador said, mainly belonged to SAARC, Africa, South America and even Central Asia. The other key countries that supported Pakistan included Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.
He said that Pakistan came back into elections a few months back when China was actively campaigning for the country and we supported India for the same position last year by voting in their favour. He said that India had already won that election unanimously but this symbolic gesture and positive interaction between him and his Indian counterpart proved productive for Pakistan in latest UNSC elections.
Haroon said that both India and Pakistan had developed a consensus on finding solutions to the problems between them through dialogue instead of militarism.
