File photo of U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price. Photo by Freddie Everett; Courtesy State Department
Spokesman says Washington does not require any country to choose between China and the U.S.
Pakistan remains a strategic partner of the U.S., State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Wednesday while responding to a journalist’s question on a recent statement of Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.
During a parliamentary address, Gandhi suggested that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ineffective foreign policies had pushed China and Pakistan closer together. “India’s single most important strategic goal has been to keep China and Pakistan apart but what you have done has only brought them together,” he said. “The foundation of their [China and Pakistan] plan has been put in place in Doklam and Ladakh. This is a serious threat to India. We have made a huge strategic mistake in Jammu and Kashmir and our foreign policy,” he added.
“Does the State Department agree with the assessment?” a journalist asked Price during a regular press briefing. While stressing that he did not “endorse” those remarks, the American spokesperson said that Pakistan and China were the relevant forum to address their relationship.
To a follow-up on why the U.S. felt Pakistan was working “so closely” with China, and whether Islamabad felt it had been “abandoned” by Washington, Price said there was no need for any country to choose between the U.S. and China. “We’ve made the point all along that it is not a requirement for any country around the world to choose between the United States and China,” he said. “It is our intention to provide choices to countries when it comes to what the relationship with the United States looks like. And we think partnership with the United States conveys a series of advantages that countries typically would not find when it comes to the sorts of partnerships that—“partnerships” may be the wrong term; the sorts of relationships that the PRC has sought to have around the world,” he added.
“Pakistan is a strategic partner of the United States,” the spokesperson emphasized. “We have an important relationship with the government in Islamabad, and it’s a relationship that we value across a number of fronts.”
Ties between Pakistan and the U.S. have vacillated, with Islamabad and Washington allying during the Cold War but falling apart when the U.S. left Afghanistan following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The situation soured further when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Pakistan after it tested nuclear weapons in 1998.
By contrast, Pakistan and China have repeatedly boasted an “all weather” relationship, with the ties strengthening following the launch of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that has been included in it.