Immediately after taking oath, Modi, his ministers and bureaucrats embarked upon a three-pronged programme further isolating Pakistan, strangulating occupied Kashmir. In its whirlwind tour of Indian Ocean states, India would initiate several quasi-defence projects there, and set up a `joint anti-terror conglomerate’. Besides, it would `train’ thousands of Maldivian civil servants. SAARC would be sidelined while BIMSTECH (minus Pakistan) strengthened.
Apathetic to India’s `outreach’, we are awaiting the IMF’s bailout with folded hands. Indian media claims that Pakistan failed to meet 18 of 27 action-plan points. A black-listing proposal could be moved at FATF’s Plenary and Working Group meetings scheduled to be held in Orlando from June 16 to 21. Pakistan’s demand for removal of India, its nemesis, from the Asia Pacific Group has not been accepted. Being blacklisted is a remote possibility though. It could be averted by garnering just three FATF votes. However, to wriggle out of the greylist Pakistan needs at least 15 of FATF’s 36 members’ votes.
India’s `outreach’ is aided by its economic wherewithal. We also need to improve our log-jammed productive capacity to offer something to the world. Since June 2016, after being designated as a “Major US Defence Partner,” the USA has been sharing sensitive technology with India as “its closest ally” (alongside hounding China for industrial espionage). Lockheed Martin has offered `to manufacture its newly-rolled-out F-21 fighter in India, underlining, that it will not sell the aircraft to any other country if India places an order for 114 planes’.
We also need to change auto-pilot and give direction to our internal and external policies.
AEIMEN JAVED MALIK,
Rawalpindi, June 10.
