Pakistan Reaffirms Its Close Relations With China

Chinese and Pakistani leaders expressed their determination Thursday that Pakistan’s role in the U.S.-led war on terrorism won’t weaken the traditionally strong ties between Beijing and Islamabad.

Kicking off a five-day official visit to China, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf assured his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, that “the cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy is its close association and relationship with China.”

The official New China News Agency quoted Jiang as telling Musharraf that “China is glad to see that Pakistan withstood the dramatic changes after the Sept. 11 incident and stabilized the situation.”

The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, which borders China as well as Pakistan, may be unsettling to Beijing. In recent years, China and Russia have sought to trump growing U.S. influence in Central Asia by building the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes four former Soviet republics in the region.

But analysts say that China’s leaders understand that Musharraf, like them, had little choice but to support the U.S.-led efforts to strike at Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Jiang told Pakistani reporters that “China understands and supports the decision Pakistan has made in the light of its national interests and the current situation.”

With the exception of North Korea, no other country has maintained as close and stable relations with China as Pakistan. Since the mid-1960s, the two countries have cooperated closely on intelligence and military issues, in addition to building strong economic ties.

Experts say that from Pakistan’s perspective, the U.S. has historically been a far less reliable partner than China.

“The Pakistanis are never going to jeopardize their Chinese alliance for ties with the U.S.,” said Dr. Svante E. Cornell, a Central Asia expert at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “They’re only going to do this as long as the two are compatible.

“The U.S. has a long way to catch up before it can come to the position that China has.”

China is Pakistan’s largest supplier of weapons and reportedly provided know-how and materials for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program in the early 1990s. Despite China’s pledges not to transfer weapons technology to Pakistan, allegations of proliferation have continued.

As its ties with India improve, China has tried to remain neutral in the escalating conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad in the Kashmir region. While India and Pakistan traded artillery barrages Thursday over the cease-fire line dividing the mountainous region, China reiterated its call for restraint and resolution of the issue through a bilateral settlement.

On the issue of rebuilding Afghanistan, Jiang told Musharraf that China will donate $3.6 million in humanitarian aid to the interim Afghan government and actively participate in the country’s postwar reconstruction.

The New China News Agency reported that Musharraf told Jiang that Pakistan is satisfied with the agreement reached in Germany this month between Afghan factions and that he hopes military operations in the country will end as soon as possible.

Jiang and Musharraf also signed several economic and technical agreements. And in an indication of other economic interests under discussion, Musharraf’s delegation included his oil minister, while Jiang’s included the head of the state commission that manages China’s defense industries.