Pakistan: Putin’s visit setback

EDITORIAL:DAILY TIMES

It had taken 65 years for any Russian President to decide to visit Pakistan. However, for ostensibly some pressing issues at home, President Vladimir Putin wrote to President Zardari that he could not attend the quadrilateral summit scheduled to be held in Pakistan amongst Russia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan on October 2-3. That the summit to discuss Afghanistan in the backdrop of the US’s withdrawal by 2014 stands cancelled has set off an array of speculations about the actual reasons that may have made the Russian President change his mind. Soon after independence, Pakistan allied itself with the US-led west, leading to the visit to the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) of Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, being cancelled. This preference to the west’s friendship over the USSR soured relations between the two countries over time, especially when India and the USSR closed ranks and the latter was on the receiving end of the decade-long resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Things have changed radically since the end of the Cold War. The retreat of the US-led west from this region is increasingly persuading regional countries to look to each other for handling problems and enhancing economic, political and security cooperation as can be seen in the developing SCO bloc. President Zardari has taken relations between Russia and Pakistan forward. Realising that Pakistan’s energy requirements can be addressed with the assistance of Russia, which is one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the world, Pakistan reached out to its giant northern neighbour, with the result that Russia has shown interest in projects like the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, apart from involvement in the project to export electricity from Tajikistan to Pakistan. The IP gas pipeline is still subject to delay due to US hostility towards Iran. However, Russia is undeterred and is ready to offer financial and technical support to the project. Russia’s only caveat is that it be awarded the contract without international tendering. Russia is also willing to assist Pakistan in oil and gas exploration and the modernisation and expansion of the Steel Mills originally set up by the USSR. It is being speculated that Putin might have decided to postpone his visit to let the issue of the blasphemous film run out of steam. Some believe that Putin wants Mr Zardari to first visit Russia in order to clarify that it is not Russia but Pakistan that is seeking economic cooperation between the two. Whatever the cause of the visit’s cancellation, in the aftermath of US forces withdrawing from Afghanistan, the region’s countries are groping their way to a new closeness to effectively tackle common problems such as terrorism, poverty alleviation through mutual economic cooperation, and maintaining peace after the scars of the conflicts afflicting the region heal. Though Putin’s visit would have been a game changer in the region vis-à-vis Pakistan’s image, one setback should not discourage Islamabad from continuing to pursue a new and beneficial architecture of cooperation with Russia and the region as a whole.