Henry Kissinger and India, Pâkistân

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Henry Kissinger and Pâkistân

Kissinger: a friend of Pakistan

Dawn

APROPOS of Mr Abdullah’s letter, ‘A wish’ (Jan 29), criticising President Musharraf for looking at Henry Kissinger (Jan 29), I have to inform him that Mr Kissinger, though a practising Jew, the second important man after president Nixon in the US, prior to and during 1971, was a friend of Pakistan.

It was perhaps due to the help provided by president Yahya Khan for becoming a bridge between Washington and Beijing. (At this time president Nixon had mused: “By not recognising China, we are saying that one billion people do not exist”.)

Both Nixon and Kissinger wanted to help Pakistan during the Pakistan-India war but the entire US administration, mesmerised by Indian lobby, went against Pakistan – and manoeuvred Nixon into installing the help.

He had to turn an enemy, or what we think of him, due to the change in the US policy after Nixon’s resignation.

When he met Z. A. Bhutto in Larkana in August 1974, Kissinger asked him to extend diplomatic recognition to Israel in the wake of Arabs recognising it after Ramazan War of 1973.

To this suggestion, Bhutto replied to him with all his hate-America policy: “We are the men of desert, Indus is in flood, and we are affected by torrents. My emotions are high so I cannot do what my people won’t accept”.

Well then, Kissinger told him that he must give up the idea of developing the nuclear programme; and compensation would be offered for the nuclear energy, and also more benefits for recognising Israel. The answer was an emphatic ‘no’. Did it seal Bhutto’s fate? This was what Mr Abdullah refers to as the threat of ‘making an example out of Z. A. Bhutto.’

The question of recognising Israel is nothing new. Tel Aviv has been trying it right from 1948 through the US and the UK. In trying to create good will, the Mumbai-born Israeli president Shimon Perez has congratulated the president of Pakistan on becoming a civilian president recently.

Before his death Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had said that he was neither against Jews nor against establishing a state of their own, recognising their state would be premature; we are not yet ready for that.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf have tried to know if our nation is ready now.

M. K. NAQVI Karachi