On the face of it, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ...
cancelled his planned trip to the US on Friday because 'he personally wanted to supervise ongoing relief efforts in flood-hit areas of Sindh'. However,
nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits...
there are indications that strained relations between the two countries have led to calling off his trip to America where he was to address a UN General Assembly session.
One reason for calling off the visit, sources told Dawn, was the American president's refusal to meet him on the sidelines of the General Assembly session scheduled for next week. They said the Pakistain embassy in Washington and consulate general in New York had tried hard to arrange a meeting between Prime Minister Gilani and President Barack
B.O.Obama, but failed.
There are conjectures about chilly diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Earlier on Friday after attending a scholarship-award ceremony, Prime Minister Gilani said: "Now it's time that they (United States) should do more." He made the remark when his attention was drawn to Americans' lack of satisfaction with efforts from Pakistain in their fight against Taliban and their demand that his government should do more.
The prime minister said Pakistain had already contributed enormously to the fight against terrorism and extremism and stressed that the US should 'do more' instead.
The Pakistain-US relations hit a new low after the US officials again pointed fingers at Pakistain after the latest Taliban attack on its embassy in Kabul and adjacent NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
headquarters. Once again the Haqqani network is in the spotlight. The US claims the network has sanctuaries on the Pak side of the Afghan border and is behind Tuesday's attack which lasted nearly 20 hours. In recent weeks, frequency of Taliban attacks on Americans in Afghanistan has substantially increased. Since the Raymond Davis and the late Osama bin Laden
... who doesn't live anywhere anymore...
episodes, there has been a serious level of trust-deficit between the two sides.
It was an eleventh hour cancellation because all arrangements related to the trip such as issuance of tickets to members of the delegation and their hotel bookings in New York had been finalised.
"Supervision of flood relief efforts is an excuse, because only this week prime minister had a couple of days' trip to Iran," remarked a journalist who was to accompany him to New York.
Referring to British Prime Minister
David Cameron... has stated that he is
certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite,which means he's not. Since he is
not deeply ideologicalhe lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as
certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger,but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ...
's telephone call to Mr Gilani, he said the Britons had always intervened whenever serious issues beset Pakistain-US relations. Mr Cameron appreciated the prime minister's decision to call off his visit to New York in view of the devastation caused by massive rains in Sindh, a handout said.