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ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry has asserted that an inclusive government was imperative for Afghanistan, urging the world and regional powers to support the process initiated by Pakistan.
“The world would have to deal with a huge mess if Pakistan’s advice on the war-ravaged country is ignored,” the information minister said while talking to Turkish news channel TRT World on Monday.
The minister said that forming a government in Afghanistan was the responsibility of the Afghan people but the regional powers would also have to stabilize the country. “Pakistan was trying for installation of an all-inclusive broad based government in Afghanistan and it should be supported”, he added.
“The way Afghanistan has been abandoned in the past and if the world repeats the same mistake, we will have hub of extremist organisations right at the border of Pakistan which will obviously be hugely worrying for us,” he cautioned.
Fawad Chaudhry pointed out the situation in Afghanistan was “very worrying” for Pakistan, recalling that “we had to deal with the problems when the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1988.”
He added that Pakistan was yet again in a quagmire as the US and NATO forces were leaving Afghanistan. “Pakistan was already hosting 3.5 million Afghan refugees”, he said adding “Our economy is not that strong to take more refugees”.
However, he said, there was no refugee crisis at the moment, adding that Pakistan had evacuated foreign nationals from Kabul. “As far as migrants are concerned, there isn’t a refugee crisis yet and our border is actually normal right now,” he added.
He underlined that Pakistan had a comprehensive strategy to deal with instability as “we do not want to repeat the 1977 episode as we don’t want these migrants to get into Pakistan”.
He said Pakistan was playing the role of a responsible country and striving for a stable Afghanistan was working with regional and international powers. “Unrest in Afghanistan was detrimental not only to Pakistan but to the entire world,” he concluded.