Cannot Afford “Enmity With The US At All”: Pakistan’s New Prime Minister Charge at Imran Khan

Pakistan cannot afford to have “enmity with the US at all,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, vowing to heal ties with all allies and friends of the nation who have been estranged from Islamabad due to Imran Khan’s previous government’s flawed foreign policy.

Sharif, who took office on April 11, expressed sadness that the previous administration, led by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, had irritated all the nations that had traditionally aided Pakistan in tough times, including China, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States.

According to the Dawn newspaper, he stated that there was a need to stop the distrust between Pakistan and the United States and that both nations needed to assess if they had made any mistakes in the past.

Pakistan cannot afford to have hatred for the United States, Sharif, also the President of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said on Tuesday during an Iftar reception at the Prime Minister’s House in response to a barrage of questions from leading journalists.

Khan was deposed after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he said was part of a US-led plot to destabilise him due to his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China, and Afghanistan.

The former cricketer-turned-politician has often claimed that his political opponents conspired with the US to bring about a regime change in Pakistan. However, he supplied no reliable evidence of this, and Washington has categorically rejected any foreign meddling.

Though Sharif addressed all concerns during his almost hour-long interview with journalists, his major focus was on the country’s foreign policy, according to the report.

He discussed his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, as well as his worries over the earlier Tuesday suicide assault on Chinese people in Karachi.