Daily Times

Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairman and former president Asif Ali Zardari appeared in an interview with Russia Today news service’s show ‘Going Underground’. Following are some experts from the conversation he had on the show.

Q. Within the past few days reports have been circulating that at least 160 civilians have been killed due to American’s planes. There’re big reports still about the Nice attacks last week, some have been talking about greater amounts of Islamophobia in Western Europe. Do you think this might be a response to that?

A. Islamophobia or any other kind of aggression should be checked. We should be ready for it. I feel we aren’t ready for that; the world isn’t ready for that. The world is not ready to accept that there is an undercurrent which is aggressive, which is angry, young people young boys. Because how can you explain the amount of kids who’ve joined up in Syria who happen to come from privileged families in West. So therefore there is a fear, there can be issues and one should be more careful and more on the ball.

Q. Let’s consider the issue that concern Britain the most, Brexit. The Pakistani stock market fell about 1400 points on the news. Do you think this would affect the relations between Pak and Britain?

A. let’s see how the issues settles. Lots of things have to be tied up, locks of locks to open, lots of renegotiating. Trade agreements have to be renegotiated. And yes it will have effect on Pakistan, and other trading partners.

Q. Would you be trying to create much bigger trade partnerships, because Britain can now negotiate itself rather than via Brussels being not in EU anymore?

A. They have an important role to play. They have always been big players in the region. And one has to work with them all the time.

Q. Let’s get on to the big war on terror issue. You previously seemed to support US, UK drone strikes and then you opposed them. You said they were counter-productive. What do you think now?

A. We asked them for them. The Afghanistan in-charge and the Pakistan in-charge in my times, but the whole condition was that the Pakistani airforce to carry out those attacks. The whole contention is that the effect becomes different. We were bombing with F-16’s and now we are short on F-16s and short on ammunition. That’s another story, and we have been asking them to give us F-16 and saying that aid war won’t make a difference towards any other country.

Q. US president’s decision to release figures of fatalities has met with some people thinking hang on a minute it can’t be that low. Hundreds of civilians have been killed. We have had whistleblowers saying that it was in thousands. How many civilians do you thin have been killed?

A. It’s not in hundreds, the figures are much more but one can never tell. For instance, the first attack that happened on my wife, 250 bodies we counted, the rest we could not. We just dug graves and put them in it. We could not know the count of how many people died in the attack. It’s a very strange phenomenon. Half the time you can’t recognise. There’s no body to identify. There is no way of calculating the exact figures.

Q. Do you think it’s just conspiracy theories when Britain and US cast so much doubt on the Pakistani govt. Specifically OSB’s assassination by America troops. How could you been living opposite the Pakistan’s Top Military Academy for so long?

A. He wasn’t living opposite, he was living in Abbotabad. It’s like living in Central London and having a flat there. How many of these boys have come in, what was happening when 9/11 happened, FBI knew, CIA knew, now we know that somebody else knew, they couldn’t put the intelligence together. It was a place like that.

And we do not have the facilities, we do not have the intelligence and we do not have the resources. And if they couldn’t catch him in the war, where they went in, where he was. After all he was a guest of the Afghan government not the guest of the Pakistan govt. yet he slipped in and we still have thousands and thousands of Afghans still living in Pakistan, we’re hosting them.

Q. Panama papers nominated PM. Do you think it’s difficult for you to be able to criticise corruption when someone like Imran Khan from PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) continues to accuse you?

A. No, we have already criticised him in the upper house, but there is a way to criticising it. Imran Khan can say what he feels like, he is a little sometimes speaks off the cuff too easily.

Q. Do you think he works with the Taliban, he obviously negotiates with them?

A. His government has obviously given 30 million to Taliban suspected madrassah (religious school).

Q. But he says it’s just a school for poor children?

A. Then why does the world says otherwise?

Q. What about the tensions with India because again we are hearing a lot about tensions in Kashmir?

A. All the tensions revolve around the tensions in Kashmir. Because we look at it as one Kashmir, we look at the fact that there are more Kashmiris are more in population in Pakistan. Our current Prime Minister is a Kashmiri. It’s about time that the world stops blaming each other and find a solution to that persisting issue.