ISLAMABAD – Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said Pakistan is no longer dependent on the United States to meet its military and other requirements and would reach out to others if one source dries up.
“If one source dries up, we have no option but to go to another source. It may cost more, it may consume more resources, but we have to fight that war [against terrorism], and that’s what we emphasized to all the people that we met,” Abbasi said in his interview with Arab News.
Pakistani Prime Minister said any sanctions or restraints put on the country’s systems would only degrade the efforts to fight terror, affecting equation in the region.
“We have major US weapons systems in our military, but we’ve also diversified. We have Chinese and European systems. Recently for the first time, we inducted Russian attack helicopters,” he said.
Abbasi said for government, it was a complex job, facing a barrage of domestic and international challenges including terrorism, an energy deficit, and economic and regional volatility.
He said governing a country with a ballooning population of over 207 million was “no walk in the park”.
He said Pakistan being one of the largest countries in the world and a nuclear power, was confronting many issues including a challenging neighborhood, war on terror and the Afghanistan conflict, “We have a neighbour to the east with which we’ve had several wars. They (India) are also a nuclear power. We have a dispute. (Monitoring Desk)