Pakistan confirms it has suspended talks, visits with US 'in protest' against Trump's criticism

Pakistan suspended bilateral talks and visits with the US "as a mark of protest over the recent anti-Pakistan diatribe by US President Donald Trump", said top government sources to Dawn newspaper.

Pakistani government officials meanwhile told another newspaper, Nation, that the country will likely not engage in any open talks with Washington before prime minister Shahid Abbasi's visit to the US next month to attend the United Nations General Assembly session.

Pakistan's foreign minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif is said to have told the country's senate yesterday that Islamabad postponing a top US official's visit to the country, purportedly until a "mutually convenient time", was in reality an act of protest.

Similarly, his own visit to the US, that was scheduled for last week and that he postponed, was also done because Islamabad is seriously miffed with Trump last week blasting Pakistan for hosting terror safe havens.

Pakistan's senate has constituted a special committee to frame how it will react to what it believes is US bullying. A resolution on this is expected to be passed by the Pakistani senate on Wednesday, said Pakistani media.

While announcing his administration's revamped Afghanistan policy last week, Trump minced no words when he called out Pakistan for giving "safe havens to agents of chaos, violence and terror". He further suggested that military and other aid to Pakistan is at stake if it does not clamp down on terror.

"That will have to change and that will change immediately...We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting," said the US President.

Trump also said he envisages a significant role for India in its new Afghanistan strategy, another policy point Pakistan is extremely sore about.

Minister Asif told the Pakistani senate yesterday that the country "envisaged no military role for India in Afghanistan." He's said to have told a senate committee "that India would not be allowed to use Afghan soil to destabilise Pakistan."

timesofindia