Category: Foreign Affairs

Pakistan announced on Thursday Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Pakistan on April 20 for a two-day visit.

“The Chinese president will attend a joint session of Parliament and important agreements in various fields will be signed during the visit,” Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said, during her weekly press briefing in Islamabad.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will launch energy and infrastructure projects worth $46 billion on a visit to Pakistan next week as China cements links with its old ally and generates opportunities for firms hit by slack growth at home.

Also being finalised is a long-discussed plan to sell Pakistan eight Chinese submarines.

The deal, worth between $4 billion and $5 billion, according to media reports, may be among those signed on the trip.

Commercial and defence ties are drawing together the two countries, which share a remote border and long-standing mistrust of their increasingly powerful neighbour, India, and many Western nations.

“China treats us as a friend, an ally, a partner and above all an equal – not how the Americans and others do,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistan Parliament’s defence committee.

Pakistan and China often boast of being “iron brothers” and two-way trade grew to $10 billion last year from $4 billion in 2007, Pakistani data shows.

Xi’s trip is expected to focus on a Pakistan-China Economic Corridor, a planned $46-billion network of roads, railways and energy projects linking Pakistan’s deepwater Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea with China’s far-western Xinjiang region.

It would shorten the route for China’s energy imports, bypassing the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, a bottleneck at risk of blockade in wartime.

If the submarine deal is signed, China may also offer Pakistan concessions on building a refuelling and mechanical station in Gwadar, a defence analyst said.

China’s own submarines could use the station to extend their range in the Indian Ocean.

“China is thinking in terms of a maritime silk road now, something to connect the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean,” said a Pakistani defence official, who declined to be identified.

For Pakistan, the corridor is a cheap way to develop its violence-plagued and poverty-stricken Balochistan, home to Gwadar.

China has promised to invest about $34 billion in energy projects and nearly $12 billion in infrastructure.

Xi is also likely to raise fears that Muslim separatists from Xinjiang are linking up with Pakistani militants, and he could also push for closer efforts for a more stable Afghanistan.

“One of China’s top priorities on this trip will be to discuss Xinjiang,” said a Western diplomat in Beijing.

“China is very worried about the security situation there.”

Reaction to UAE minister

Pakistan refused on Thursday to respond to a statement by a UAE junior foreign minister that censured Pakistan’s neutral stance on the Saudi-led offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“We do not respond to statements issued on Twitter,” Aslam said.

Read: No fence-sitting: Pakistan ‘ambiguous stance’ angers UAE

On April 11, UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash took to social networking site Twitter to criticise Pakistan’s stance and warned the country of a “heavy price.”

The Pakistani parliament’s resolution, which promoted neutrality on the Yemeni conflict, and voiced support for Saudi Arabia is contradictory and dangerous and unexpected from Islamabad,” the UAE minister had said.

“In favour of its strategic relations with the Gulf nations, contradictory and ambiguous views on this decisive matter will cost highly,” he added.

However, earlier this week Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif clarified the United Arab Emirates foreign minister’s criticism of Pakistan’s neutral stance on Yemen was a result of an “apparent misunderstanding.”

Read: Yemen resolution misinterpreted, Pakistan does not abandon strategic partners: PM

“We are also in touch with other GCC countries to assure them that their disappointment was based on an apparent misinterpretation of Parliament’s Resolution.”

“Pakistan does not abandon friends and strategic partners, especially at a time when their security is under threat,” the premier said, while addressing the nation on April 13.

‘Not involved in an arms race’

Further, reacting to a New York Times editorial asking the world to shift its focus to Pakistan as it grows its nuclear arsenal, Aslam said, “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear nation and we are not involved in any arms race.”

ISLAMABAD, April 9 — China will build a pipeline to bring natural gas from Iran to Pakistan to help address Pakistan’s acute energy shortage, under a deal to be signed during the Chinese president’s visit to Islamabad this month, Pakistani officials said.

The arrival of President Xi Jinping is expected to showcase China’s commitment to infrastructure development in ally Pakistan, at a time when few other countries are willing to make major investments in the cash-strapped, terrorism-plagued country.

The pipeline would amount to an early benefit for both Pakistan and Iran from the framework agreement reached earlier this month between Tehran and the U.S. and other world powers to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. had previously threatened Pakistan with sanctions if it went ahead with the project.

“We’re building it,” Pakistani Petroleum Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told The Wall Street Journal. “The process has started.”

In Washington, U.S. officials said details of sanctions will be negotiated as part of a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran due in June.

“We aren’t going to speculate as to how any solutions we may reach in that regard could impact on any particular proposed business ventures,” a State Department official said late Wednesday, adding that “significant support to Iran’s energy sector, such as providing significant investment or technology,” could still result in sanctions under the framework agreement last week.

Dubbed the “Peace Pipeline,” the project will further bolster improving ties between Pakistan and Iran, uneasy neighbors for decades as a result of Pakistan’s ties to Iran’s long-term adversaries, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

The pipeline will bring much-needed gas to Pakistan, which suffers from a crippling electricity deficit because of a shortage of fuel for its power-generation plants. Pakistan has been negotiating for months behind the scenes for China to build the Pakistani portion of the pipeline, which will cost up to $2 billion.

Tehran says that its 560-mile (900-kilometer) part of the pipeline from an Iranian gas field is complete and has long pressed Pakistan to build its part of the scheme.

Pakistan hasn’t begun construction, however, in light of threatened U.S. sanctions for trading with Iran. Islamabad had sought to work around the sanctions by asking the Chinese to build the pipeline but not yet connect it to the Iranian portion. The prospect of an Iran nuclear agreement, which would ease sanctions in stages once the deal is completed, has given Islamabad further impetus to clear the project. Among the first sanctions to be lifted, according to the framework accord, would be the ban on Iran energy exports.

“This [Iran nuclear agreement] will help us in getting a few things which were coming into the way of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline to be cleared and we will move forward,” Pakistan’s ambassador to Iran, Noor Muhammad Jadmani, said Sunday in Tehran, according a report on IRNA, the official Iranian news agency.

Pakistan is negotiating with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau, a subsidiary of Chinese energy giant China National Petroleum Corporation, to build 435 miles (700 kilometers) of pipeline from the western Pakistani port of Gwadar to Nawabshah in the southern province of Sindh, where it will connect to Pakistan’s existing gas-distribution pipeline network.

China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau referred questions to CNPC, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The cost would be $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion for the pipeline, or $2 billion if an optional Liquefied Natural Gas terminal at Gwadar is included in the scheme. Under the deal, 85% of the financing will be provided by a Chinese loan, with Pakistan coming up with the rest.

The remaining 50 miles (80 kilometers), from Gwadar to the Iranian border, will be built by Pakistan. The pipeline, which would take two years to build, would eventually supply Pakistan with enough gas to fuel 4,500 megawatts of electricity generation—almost as much as the country’s entire current electricity shortfall.

The pipeline would give Iran a market to its east for its gas. The pipeline scheme, conceived in 1995, originally was supposed to extend to India. Tehran blames U.S. pressure for India dropping out in 2009.

Islamabad believes the Iranian gas is the cheapest and simplest energy supply option for Pakistan. Pakistan will also start to take liquefied natural gas from Qatar, and it remains in protracted multicountry negotiations over a pipeline that would bring gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to supply Pakistan and India. Washington had long lobbied Pakistan to go for the Turkmenistan pipeline instead of the Iranian one.
The Chinese president’s visit, which has been postponed at least twice, is now expected on or around April 19.

Pakistan has had a close strategic alliance with China for decades—aimed mostly against common foe India—but now Beijing is seeking to add an economic dimension to the relationship. Islamabad and Beijing plan an “economic corridor” linking the Pakistani port of Gwadar, which is under Chinese management, to southwestern China with road and rail connections. The highly ambitious program, which also includes power-generation projects, carries a price tag of some $40 billion. Unveiling agreements and details for the economic corridor will form a center piece of Mr. Xi’s visit.

The Iran pipeline isn’t part of the economic corridor but it will be separately fast-tracked, Pakistani officials said.

“The Chinese have an expertise, a willingness to come here, and also work in areas which are not considered to be very safe,” said Hamayoun Khan, director of the Pakistan Council on China, an independent think tank based in Islamabad.
—Jeremy Page in Beijing contributed to this article.

Pakistan’s defense minister says his country is considering a request to provide ground troops to complement the Saudi Arabian-led airstrikes against Houthi forces in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia began air attacks on the Houthis on Thursday as the rebels advanced on the Yemeni port of Aden. The Sunni Muslim monarchy has been assembling allies to defend Yemen’s weak government against rebels backed by both Iran and a former Yemeni president.

The Pakistani foreign ministry confirmed that the Saudis have asked Pakistan contribute ground forces to Yemen, Reuters reports, but Defense Minister Khawaja Asif indicated that Pakistan is reluctant to get involved.

“We have made no decision to participate in this war. We didn’t make any promise. We have not promised any military support to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,” Asif told parliament.

“In Syria, Yemen and Iraq, division is being fueled and it needs to be contained. The crisis has its fault lines in Pakistan too, (we) don’t want to disturb them.”

Mr. Asif did tell Reuters that Pakistan would step in should Saudi Arabia’s territory be threatened, but that “there is no danger of us getting involved in a sectarian war.”

Nonetheless, a sectarian war threatens to emerge from the fighting in Yemen, where Houthi rebels are attempting to oust the Saudi-backed government of President Abdu Rabbo Mansur Hadi. The Houthis, members of Yemen’s Shiite minority, claim that Mr. Hadi’s government is corrupt and has violated the terms of departure of the previous president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced from power in 2011. Saudi Arabia brokered a transfer of power at the time.

Yemeni Military units allied with Mr. Saleh, who ruled Yemen for decades with US and Saudi support, are now also backing the Houthis.

The Houthis seized Sanaa, the inland capital, in January, but it was their advance towards the port town of Aden that spurred Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s neighbor to the north, to directly intervene. The Saudis have assembled a bloc of four other nations, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Sudan, to drive back the Houthis. UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar are also involved, supplying equipment to the Saudi coalition, the BBC reports.

Rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi called the coalition’s actions “criminal” on Thursday, reports Deutsche Welle. Iran similarly called for an end to the Saudi bloc’s operations, with Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham saying the offensive would “bear no result but expansion of terrorism and extremism throughout the whole region.”

Though the coalition has not ruled out sending ground forces to the region, so far it is only running aerial military operations. Bloomberg reports that in their second day of bombing, Saudi planes struck in the Yemeni north, including an airbase held by Saleh-allied forces. CNN reports that overall, 15 sites were hit, and at least 10 people killed in the attacks.

And while the US is not directly involved in the Saudi coalition, it is providing intelligence to the bloc for its strikes. Two anonymous US officials told Bloomberg that the coalition forces “made use of imagery and targeting information from US intelligence and other assets. While Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab nations possess attack and aerial refueling aircraft, they lack the reconnaissance satellites, drones and eavesdropping equipment in the American inventory.”