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India, Pak should learn to live with each other: Khar

Beijing, August 25
India and Pakistan should learn to live with each other's positions and talk so that "issues" between the two countries do not pass on to the next generation, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said.

Khar, who is on her maiden visit to China, said that Pakistan accords priority to improving ties with neighbours, especially India and Afghanistan.

Difficulties in the relationship between Pakistan and India should not simply pass on to the next generation, Khar, who was elevated as Pakistan's Foreign Minister last month, told state-run China Daily.

Besides unresolved "core issues", mutual trust must be built by looking at other issues, she said.

"If we can't learn to trust each other, the issues will be passed on to the next generation," she told Global Times.

On Afghanistan, she said that any action in the war-ravaged country should be based on realities on the ground and not on any artificial or preset deadlines.

"Pakistan will support the Afghans’ decisions built on political reconciliation and the strategic agreement reached with countries in the region," she said.

But surprisingly, while covering her first visit, the focus of the Chinese media remained on terrorism emanating from Pakistan in the light of the August 1 charge by a municipal government of Kasghar, a city in China's Xinjiang which experienced brutal attacks by Uyghur militants last month.

Highlighting China's concerns, the headline in today's China Daily about her visit was “Pakistan Foreign Minister calls for more robust anti-terror cooperation”.

Khar told the daily that China and Pakistan will seek more robust ties on counter-terrorism mechanism through existing cooperation.

"Terrorism is against the interests of both our countries and regional economic integration. And we are going to push such cooperation further by strengthening the sharing of intelligence," she told Global Times.

The East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), she said, is a common enemy and both the countries have a firm resolve to eliminate the menace.

She also said media's attention on her "personal charm and doubts over her diplomatic experience" should not overshadow her work.

"I hope such media discussion will not overshadow my real diplomatic activities, and of course, there are both advantages and disadvantages of being young, but you can't measure a person's ability by how old he or she is," she said, stressing that many people tend to overlook her seven-year career in the federal government as Junior Minister in President Pervez Musharraf’s administration. — PTI