Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00002999
Country ... Pakistan
Conversation with Pakistan's foreign minister
August 2012 ... Talk to Al Jazeera ... Hina Rabbani Khar: Forging new ties ... Pakistan's foreign minister says the country will determine what is in its best interests, not what makes it popular.
COMMENTARY
I thought this was an important conversation, but was quite disappointed in the tone of the conversation early on. I gave the following feedback to AlJazeera English:
I was more than a little disappointed at the 'tone' of this conversation. Sounded too much like a frustrated old white man not able to accept that a bright Pakistani women might be on top of her game ... and doing rather well at it!I am old enought to have some memories of the old British Empre, and am impressed by the change that has taken place over the subsequent decades, but there remains a level of arrogance in public policy and international affairs that reminds one of the old days of Empire.
In my international work, I have been able to work with local experts in developing countries who had a lot more to contribute than the international experts who were engaged to advise. The inability for local experts to be taken seriously is partly a local issue, and partly because much of the external advise is linked to financing, something that causes huge distortion in the decision making process and also results in opportunities for corruption.
Peter Burgess
Hina Rabbani Khar: Forging new ties Pakistan's foreign minister says the country will determine what is in its best interests, not what makes it popular.
US-led NATO forces engage Pakistani troops at two Pakistani military check posts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border leaving 24 Pakistani soldiers dead. The Pakistani response is swift and angry. It closes all supply routes for NATO into Afghanistan, plunging relations with the US to a new low. Hina Rabbani Khar, the country's new foreign minister, demands an American apology as a condition for reopening the supply lines. After months of wrangling, she gets her apology from Hillary Clinton.
The incident illustrates the high stakes and complexities for those managing the foreign policy of Pakistan. And as it straddles geo-political fault lines stretching from Moscow to Beijing and from Tehran to Washington, Hina Rabbani Khar, the Pakistani foreign minister, is at the centre of it all.
She does not hide the fact that other capitals around the world are just as important to her as Washington DC. Khar says she wants better relations with Iran, that it is 'always a delight to meet with the Russians' and that it is time to stop fighting and start building with New Delhi.
'We are more concerned about what is in the long-term and medium-term interests for Pakistan than we are about what is popular,' she says. 'Instead of typically undermining the importance of the democratic process and what we are trying to achieve in Pakistan we should try and recognise, if not celebrate, the change that is taking place in Pakistan.'
So we decided to sit down with Pakistan's foreign minister to discuss how she now intends to move her country's foreign policy forward. But we begin with her tough response to the NATO incident that killed so many Pakistani soldiers, and the degree to which she is really prepared to push the US to protect Pakistani interests - especially as American drone attacks in her country are still ongoing.