Former US Secy State Kissinger hails Pakistan’s role in the US, China breakthrough

ISLAMABAD:

The China Development Forum, a high-level annual event organised by China’s State Council in Beijing, organised a webinar on ‘50 Years of China-US Relations’ with keynote speeches by former US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger and Senator Mushahid Hussain on Pakistan’s pivotal role in arranging Dr Kissinger’s secret journey to China in 1971.

Dr Kissinger praised Pakistan for its key role during that period and how then-president Yahya Khan had acted as a go-between for China and US.

The former president had communicated secretly with then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and then US president Richard Nixon, which led to Dr Kissinger’s path-breaking journey in a PIA plane from Islamabad to Beijing on July 9, 1971.

Dr Kissinger recounted on how the first message from China was in the form of a handwritten note which was personally dictated to him in the White House by the then Pakistan ambassador in Washington, Agha Hilaly.

Speaking next after Dr Kissinger, Senator Mushahid Hussain, representing Pakistan, said that this historic breakthrough in China-US relations became possible due to the ‘indispensable role of Pakistan which enjoyed the trust of both China and the US, whose then president, Nixon, had tremendous affection and goodwill for Pakistan’.

Mushahid added that Gen Yahya, once entrusted with this task by both Nixon and Zhou, undertook this sensitive mission with ‘military precision, secrecy and deception’.

He officially announced a decoy visit by Dr Kissinger to Nathiagali on the pretext that ‘the American official was resting due to an upset stomach’ whereas he had secretly flown to Beijing.

“[Former] president Yahya relied only on a two-man team of his top diplomats, Foreign Secretary Sultan Mohammed Khan and Pakistan Ambassador to the US, Agha Hilaly,” he added.

Senator Mushahid said it was an honour for Pakistan to play such an important role in the shaping of history, as Dr Kissinger’s visit to China led to a tectonic shift in the global balance of power in 1971’. He said that normalisation of relations had been beneficial for not just China and the US but also Asia and the rest of the world.

“China had helped the US win the Cold War and the US helped China come out of isolation which led later to China’s reform and opening up policy that has transformed China.”

Senator Mushahid concluded that 50 years later, one lesson of China-US relations was that cooperation was good for both the countries, and there was no room for outmoded policies like containment or a New Cold War.

The China Development Forum was attended by a large number of high-ranking officials, policymakers, economists, opinion and business leaders in Beijing, while Dr Kissinger and Senator Mushahid spoke virtually from New York and Islamabad respectively.