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Ex-U.S. Envoy To Pakistan Calls For 'Marriage, Not One-Night Stand'
Former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter says Washington and its uneasy ally must build on a mutual "desire for marriage, not a one-night stand."
Speaking at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in his first public remarks since leaving Islamabad in July, Munter said "deeper" and "more sophisticated" ties with Pakistan would help overcome entrenched assumptions about each other's motives. "We will be able to conceive of our American policy towards Pakistan, I hope, in a way that is broader, has more of a long-term focus, and isn't trapped by these narratives," he said. "We don't change those narratives, but the question is, can we go around them?" Munter asked. "Can we do something else so that the question of whether or not Pakistanis are all betrayers and people who take our money and whether Americans are those people who come but then leave you -- whether that question doesn't get solved but becomes, perhaps, less relevant?" 'Face Of America' To do so, Munter proposed greater U.S. emphasis on people-to-people contacts, business and educational ties, and public diplomacy, so that "the face of America is your neighbor, an engineer who works on a Punjab ditch" and not "the face of Raymond Davis." The former CIA contractor sparked tensions between Islamabad and Washington after fatally shooting two Pakistani men in Lahore in January 2011. Posted by: tipper 2012-09-27 |
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