US, India preparing for new empire, fumes Pak media

 This assessment by The News daily came in the context of the key statement on the future relationship between the US and India, at a joint news conference made by Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where the US President spoke of the bilateral ties as “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century”.

Obama also completed the “circle by saying that he now recognised India as a world power” and this, The News claimed, was an indication that the US and India “may be drawing the preparatory sketches for a new form of empire” that could lead to an “Amer-asian hegemony”.

Obama’s exhortation for peace in the region during his India visit also led to calls in the Pakistani media to its government to refashion its “confrontational” foreign policy and develop a “more differentiated and supple approach to the world outside.

The desire for peace has to come from within as made clear by Obama’s remarks in India, the newspapers said in editorials and front page opinion pieces on Tuesday on his visit.
As the US has made it clear that it cannot impose solutions to long standing issues like Kashmir, the papers said that Pakistan will have to look hard at the American President’s remarks.

Pakistan must develop a “more differentiated and supple approach to the world outside” instead of being habituated to a confrontational foreign policy that had developed “because of the subordination of our Foreign Office to the military point of view,” said The Express Tribune.

In an editorial titled ‘Reading Obama right’, the daily said if Pakistan remains reluctant in refashioning its foreign policy, then it ran the risk of being seen as “an inward-looking state that no longer cares how isolated it is in the world”.