what right pakistan to question india abot its relationship with islamic countries.
do we have to get permission from pakistan
to conduct diplomacy.
following article examines the issue
The statement attributed to a spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office on the visit to Saudi Arabia by the Indian Minister for External Affairs, Jaswant Singh, is illustrative of the naive view the country's policy-makers take of relations with the Muslim world. The statement questions the motives of Mr Singh's visit and suggests that this will undermine Pakistan's ties with Saudi Arabia. It contains a clear anxiety over Delhi's hobnobbing with Riyadh. It seems that we have not yet learnt the basic lesson of modern diplomacy--that countries at times pursue their interests independent of emotive intangibles like religion and ideology. This is not the first contact between Saudi Arabia and India, even though in terms of profile it is the most conspicuous. The two interact with each other on a wide range of subjects, business and commerce being two of the many others.
India's expanding energy needs and its growing middle class market offer attractive incentives to business concerns all over the world, and members of the Muslim Ummah are not an exception. We have woken up to the inroads the Indians are making into the Middle East and the Gulf in a peculiar fashion obliquely suggesting to the Saudis that somehow they should keep Delhi at arms length. The response to any such plea cannot be other than an indifferent shrug because, as always, there is no such thing as permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
A more efficacious attempt to protect our interests from being hurt by the mounting tide of the Indian presence in the Muslim world would be to compete for the markets and important jobs in the region. Since the end of the eighties, Pakistan has lost out to the Indians in almost every field in each country of the region. It is this success that is the basis of Delhi's interaction with the Muslim states, carefully circumventing its twin problems of having a poor record of dealing with the Muslims and of being a close ally of Israel.
Pakistan still has many things going for it provided the policy-makers seize these advantages. Its traditional bonds with Saudi Arabia and other states of the Middle East and the Gulf are very strong, made stronger by institutional structures like the OIC. Shared religion is the general glue which binds Islamabad to its Islamic friends. Our expatriate community is a recognisable force, even though not as pithy as it once used to be. These factors can work to our benefit if we leave the tendency of relying on the goodness of others to take care of our interests. One visit by Jaswant Singh is unlikely to dent our ties with Saudi Arabia. A couple of more might.
do we have to get permission from pakistan
to conduct diplomacy.
following article examines the issue
The statement attributed to a spokesman of the Pakistan Foreign Office on the visit to Saudi Arabia by the Indian Minister for External Affairs, Jaswant Singh, is illustrative of the naive view the country's policy-makers take of relations with the Muslim world. The statement questions the motives of Mr Singh's visit and suggests that this will undermine Pakistan's ties with Saudi Arabia. It contains a clear anxiety over Delhi's hobnobbing with Riyadh. It seems that we have not yet learnt the basic lesson of modern diplomacy--that countries at times pursue their interests independent of emotive intangibles like religion and ideology. This is not the first contact between Saudi Arabia and India, even though in terms of profile it is the most conspicuous. The two interact with each other on a wide range of subjects, business and commerce being two of the many others.
India's expanding energy needs and its growing middle class market offer attractive incentives to business concerns all over the world, and members of the Muslim Ummah are not an exception. We have woken up to the inroads the Indians are making into the Middle East and the Gulf in a peculiar fashion obliquely suggesting to the Saudis that somehow they should keep Delhi at arms length. The response to any such plea cannot be other than an indifferent shrug because, as always, there is no such thing as permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.
A more efficacious attempt to protect our interests from being hurt by the mounting tide of the Indian presence in the Muslim world would be to compete for the markets and important jobs in the region. Since the end of the eighties, Pakistan has lost out to the Indians in almost every field in each country of the region. It is this success that is the basis of Delhi's interaction with the Muslim states, carefully circumventing its twin problems of having a poor record of dealing with the Muslims and of being a close ally of Israel.
Pakistan still has many things going for it provided the policy-makers seize these advantages. Its traditional bonds with Saudi Arabia and other states of the Middle East and the Gulf are very strong, made stronger by institutional structures like the OIC. Shared religion is the general glue which binds Islamabad to its Islamic friends. Our expatriate community is a recognisable force, even though not as pithy as it once used to be. These factors can work to our benefit if we leave the tendency of relying on the goodness of others to take care of our interests. One visit by Jaswant Singh is unlikely to dent our ties with Saudi Arabia. A couple of more might.
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