ISLAMABAD – The US is not present in South Asia for peace and stability butto create chaos in the region, Pakistan’s former foreign minister HinaRabbani Khar has said.

“As George Friedman states in his book ‘The Next 100 Years’, the US ispresent there to create chaos in the region so that Russia, China, Iran andother regional countries can be contained,” Khar told CNN in an interview.

While discussing the New Year tweet of US President Donald Trump, Khar saidthat if she was in Foreign Office, she would have “ignored the tweet” andbe “more concerned about tweeter than the tweet”.

Pakistan is still reeling from the after-effects of Trump’s first tweet of2018 in which he announced cutting all further aid to Islamabad on chargesof harbouring terrorists.

In the tweet, Trump said “the US had foolishly given Pakistan over $33billion in aid over the last 15 years” and accused Pakistan of thinking “USleaders to be fools”.

“They give safe havens to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, withlittle help. No more!” he said.

Asked what was her reaction after the aid cut announcement, Khar said: “TheUS is currently the superpower, but if you’re going to tweet away yourforeign policy, then clearly frankly if I was in the Foreign Office ofPakistan, I would totally ignore this tweet.”

“This person is a habitual tweeter who tweets rather flippantly, almostlike which side of the bed you woke up on. After all the other tweets, Ithink we should be more concerned about the tweeter than the tweet,” shesaid.

Khar said that Trump’s belief about Pakistan’s dependence on US aid was“exaggerated”, the Nation daily reported citing CNN.

“I don’t think we’re dependent on it at all. As someone who managedPakistan’s portfolios for almost five years, I can tell you that ourreliance on them is vastly exaggerated.”

Taking a jibe at Trump, Khar said one doesn’t need to be a “stable genius”to do some basic mathematics.