Daily Times

Sir: The Daily Times has done a commendable job by printing two most relevant and informative articles in its newspaper of September 12, 2018 — one by Imtiaz Gul and the other by Munir Ahmed that relate to Pakistan’s relations with China, in general and the other, to CPEC projects, in particular.

After months of worrying whispers attributed to PTI members with regard to CPEC projects that encouraged some foreign powers to redouble their efforts to sow seeds of discord between Pakistan and China, Senator Shibli Faraz spilled the beans on this subject in his remarks in the Senate. But it was Advisor Razak Dawood’s interview to the Financial Times that came as a rude shock and deep disappointment.

Of course, Mr Dawood had earlier too, expressed his disappointment at not having succeeded in getting projects for his own corporation under the CPEC framework, when he aired his grievances in an interview published in a local newspaper on January 8, 2018. But in choosing to pontificate on this subject after having assumed a sensitive post in the Government and that too in a British newspaper on the very day that the Chinese Foreign Minister was visiting Pakistan on his very first visit, after the coming into office of the new government, was not simply irresponsible, but one bordering on reckless desperation.

Mr Razak Dawood, a stalwart of the Musharraf regime, must have been made aware of the essence of Pakistan-China relations, if not the details. He would have also known that the scale and scope of cooperation between the two countries is simply unprecedented. He is much too intelligent and much too well informed to think that by claiming to have been misquoted by the newspaper, his denial will undo the damage. Trust, that has been the foundation of Pak-China relations, when once breached, is well-nigh impossible to bridge.

TARIQ FATEMI

Islamabad

Published in Daily Times, September 13^th 2018.