New doc leaks: Pakistan can't sacrifice China ties for US partnership
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Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs says that Islamabad must not appear appeasing to the West.
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A mockup representation of classified US military documents and a keyboard are seen in this illustration taken April 13, 2023. (Reuters)
Pakistan is no longer able to maintain a middle ground between China and the United States, Islam Abad's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar said in an internal memo that appeared in Pentagon's leak documents, as per The Washington Post.
Earlier this month, confidential documents containing US national security secrets were leaked online on platforms such as Discord, Telegram, and Twitter. The documents were related to China, Ukraine, and the Middle East - including sensitive intelligence reports, Ukraine war plans, and information on allies that the US obtained through spying on them.
Titled “Pakistan’s Difficult Choices,” Khar, who also earlier served as the country's foreign minister, warned in the intercepted memo that Islamabad must refrain from appearing as a country that is appeasing the West.
Read more: Pentagon leaker could still have access to classified info: Filing
Pakistan would eventually be sacrificing the full benefits of the “real strategic” partnership with China if it continues to attempt to preserve its partnership with the US. A talk between Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and an aide also appeared in another document dated last February.
The prime minister was discussing the then UN vote on the war in Ukraine and the expected Western pressure on Pakistan to back a resolution condemning Russia. According to the file, the aide warned Sharif that supporting the resolution could put potential energy deals with Russia at risk. Islamabad later abstained from the vote along with 31 other countries.
India
The newspaper also said a new document revealed that Washington has also been spying on India.
that The US intercepted a conversation between India's national security advisor Ajit Kumar Doval and his Russian counterpart Nikolay Patrushev, where Doval expressed New Delhi's support of Moscow in multilateral issues and is making efforts, despite “considerable pressure," to prevent the war in Ukraine from becoming a central issue, during a G20 meeting was chaired by his country.
The meeting of the foreign ministers of the 20 countries failed to reach an agreement on the Ukraine issue due to disagreements.
The Indian national security official said that his country “would not deviate from the principled position it had taken in the past," and would resist Western pressure over an anti-Russia UN vote.”
The leaked classified documents left relations between the US and its allies in a state of crisis, as the incident is reported to be the largest since Wikileaks exposed classified US files, said Politico earlier in April.
