Pakistani PM Imran Khan seeks even handed treatment at par with India from the next US President
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In a free-wheeling interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan link his views on the upcoming US elections, apprehensions vis-a-vis India's greater involvement in Afghanistan and Islamabad's warm ties with Beijing, among several other issues.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan link said he would like the next American president to afford Islamabad "even-handed treatment" on par with arch-rival India, while weighing in on the outcome of the US presidential election on 3 November during an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.
"What we really want from the US is even-handed treatment with respect to India, especially with the dispute in Kashmir. The region is a hotspot, it could flare up at any time. That's why we expect the US, as the strongest country in the world, to be even handed, whoever becomes president", the 68-year-old Khan told the magazine.
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Trump's ties with Pakistan didn't really get off on the right footing, with the 74-year-old American president having blasted Islamabad on 1 January 2018 for giving the US nothing but "lies and deceit" in return for billions of dollars of financial assistance since 2001. However, the Trump administration reportedly recalibrated its ties with Islamabad last year after the US entered formal negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
While Khan deftly parried a question about which candidate he backed as the next American president, the former cricket world cup winning captain-turned-politician did concede that the incumbent US president link was "unpredictable", despite the Democratic Party challenger being the frontrunner in the polls.
Khan also opined that America's premise about India being a potential counterweight to China was "flawed".
In addition, the Pakistani PM blasted the current Indian government for being inspired by the "Nazis", claiming that there are similarities between the seminal texts of the German Nazis and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the latter are considered the ideological fountainhead of India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). - Sputnik
