By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s junior minister for Foreign Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar, had cautioned the country’s top leadership against sacrificing its strategic partnership with China to maintain a cordial relationship with the United States, The Washington Post, quoting a recent leak of US intelligence documents on the Discord messaging platform, reported on Sunday.
The leaked documents contained conversations between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Khar on foreign policy matters.
The highly classified findings of the US intelligence revealed the internal assessment of Pakistan’s policymakers on how to tackle the challenge of the growing tussle between the United States and China.
In an internal memo titled “Pakistan’s Difficult Choices,” Khar, who previously served as Pakistan’s foreign minister, cautioned that Islamabad should avoid giving the appearance of appeasing the West, and said the instinct to preserve Pakistan’s partnership with the United States would ultimately sacrifice the full benefits of what she deemed the country’s “real strategic” partnership with China.
Khar argued in March that her country can “no longer try to maintain a middle ground between China and the United States.”
The undated intelligence document does not detail how the United States gained access to Khar’s memo.
The leak of US intelligence documents posted largely on social media websites was believed to be the most serious security breach since more than 700,000 documents, videos, and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2010.
The leaked documents provide a rare glimpse into the private calculations made by influential regional powers such as India, Brazil, Pakistan, and Egypt.
The documents also offer new insights into the obstacles that the Joe Biden administration faces in securing global support for its efforts.
The episode, however, embarrassed the US by revealing its spying on allies, including Pakistan, and the purported military vulnerabilities of Ukraine.
Another document, dated February 17, describes Prime Minister Sharif’s deliberations with a subordinate about an upcoming UN vote on the Ukraine conflict, and what the government anticipated would be renewed Western pressure to back a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion.
The aide advised Sharif that support for the measure would signal a shift in Pakistan’s position following its earlier abstention on a similar resolution, the intelligence document says.
Pakistan had the ability to negotiate trade and energy deals with Russia, and backing the Western-backed resolution could jeopardize those ties, the aide noted.
When the UN General Assembly voted on February 23, Pakistan was among 32 countries that abstained.
The Post said Pakistani officials and those from other countries named in the leaked documents declined to comment.
The story emerges at a time when Washington has already confirmed that it has no objections to Pakistan’s decision to import oil from Moscow.
“Each country will make its own sovereign decisions regarding its energy supply,” US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a weekly briefing.
Matias Spektor, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said developing nations are recalibrating their positions as America faces potent new competition from China and Russia.
“It’s unclear who will end up in a pole position in 10 years’ time, so they need to diversify their risk and hedge their bets,” Spektor told the Post.
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