Transcripts For ALJAZ Imran Khan 20240714

Aljazeera. Where ever you. See. Its been a year since former cricketer turned politician imraan khan became pakistans Prime Minister khans Campaign Slogan was nigh a pakistani or new pakistan a reflection of his promises to turn the countrys economy around and end corruption. But the 1st year of his premiership hasnt gone as smoothly as you may have hoped or even expected especially in terms of the economy the pakistani rupee has lost 35 percent of its value during his time in office comes critics call him the Prime Minister of the u. Turns as he has been forced to go back on many of his campaign pledges in an attempt to rescue the situation. But have any of these u. Turns had a positive impact on the country in terms of Foreign Affairs pakistan is closer than ever to its neighbor china but relations with its other neighbor india are at a new low are these 2 Nuclear Countries at risk of another major conflict or war. And how much of a room in islamabad Prime Minister conor recently marked one year in office i sat down with him in discussed his governments controversies as well as pakistans foreign and domestic policies pakistani Prime Minister imran khan talks to aljazeera. Pakistani Prime Minister imran khan thank you for talking to aljazeera youll soon be at the u. N. G. A. In new york youll be making your debut there as the Prime Minister of pakistan what message do you hope to impart to the International Community from their will under normal circumstances i would have. Talked about Climate Change by just done as one of the few countries that is most wonderful to Climate Change i would have spoken at length on that and secondly about Islam Islamophobia the way muslims suffer from islam before especially living in western countries and of course in india islam of will be in india right now muslims are. Subjected to persecution but because of what is happening in kashmir i would be i would be merely talking about the situation at the United Nations Human Rights Council in geneva pakistans foreign minister sharon mahmood qureshi. He made remarks saying that he believed that because of what india was doing in kashmir that india and pakistan could be led into an accidental war do you believe this is a possibility absolutely what is happening is that india is more or less conducted conducting a genocide the sort of racial attacks on the population i dont think its been witnessed since nazi germany what is happening is the indian version of a final solution for the muslims of kashmir so 8000000 muslims and kashmir under siege for almost 6 weeks. And why did this gun become a flashpoint between india and pakistan because what india what we know already and just india is trying to do is to divert attention from the illegal annexation and the impending genocide and beat their drug they are taking the attention it away by blaming pakistan for terrorism and this is what the last february when the there was a Suicide Attack a young boy blew him self up against an Indian Military convoy and india blamed pakistan for it and then bombed us so we fear that this will happen again because what theyre doing in kashmir will lead to a reaction some sort of a reaction and they will then blame pakistan for it to divert the worlds attention from this the genocide in kashmir Prime Minister khan youre speaking about kashmir being a flashpoint of course that raises concerns about potential use of Nuclear Weapons either in pakistan or in india now recently you made remarks saying or at least the remarks were interpreted as you saying that pakistan would never use Nuclear Weapons 1st in any potential future conflict with india but then a few days later pakistans ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified that there had been no change to Pakistans Nuclear defensive posture so there is some confusion now what exactly is pakistan stance and is there a scenario by which you could envision Nuclear Weapons being used 1st by pakistan as a defensive posture there is the confusion what i said was that pakistan would never start a war. And im im a pacifist im anti war but what i said clearly was that when do Nuclear Armed countries fight if they fight a conventional war there is every possibility that its going to end up into nuclear war the unthinkable i mean you know if if said pakistan for god forbid we fight a conventional war were losing and if a country is stuck between the choice either you surrender or you fight till death for your freedom i know pakistanis will fight to death for their freedom so that when a Nuclear Armed country fights to the end to the death. It has consequences so thats why im we have approached the United Nations be a problem we are we are approaching every International Forum that there must act right now because this is a potential. A disaster which would go way beyond the indian subcontinent where do you stand now when it comes to potentially seeking dialogue with india because at 1st you had said you were open to it you had made overtures and then recently you said thats no longer the case from the time. I assumed office. Last august we have made repeated attempts to start a dialogue with india to mend to live a civilized neighbors to resolve our difference and there is only one difference thats kashmir to resolve it through through a political settlement. And that why trade was important between pakistan and india both countries of a from poverty both countries suffer from a huge impending disaster of Climate Change both of us of us have similar problems so i approach them that we should you know resume talks and sort out our differences. We repeatedly tried that all the time where we were trying to. Do a start a dialogue and. Ask for talks we now i realize that this was misinterpreted this b. G. P. Extreme right wing racist fascist government was treating us as we were scared of them or they took it as appeasement we were trying to please them and as a result we discovered that while we were trying to have dialogue they were trying to push us in the blacklist in fact of. If we are on the great list pakistan is pushing to the back blacklist of factor that means there will be sanctions on pakistan so they were trying to bankrupt us economically thats when we pull back and thats when we realize that this government is on an agenda the gender is to push pakistan to disaster so a so theres no question of talking to the Indian Government right now after the. Revoke the article 370. 00 of their own constitution and they annexed illegally against the United Nations Security Council resolution which had guaranteed the people that they would be able to hold a referendum a plebiscite to decide the destiny so they have unilaterally. Not only broken International Laws but also their own constitution so theres no question of talking to india in these circumstances so if downgrading of diplomatic ties hasnt changed indias stance toward kashmir and if cutting off trade ties with india hasnt changed their stance and if there is no longer a prospect of dialogue what else can pakistan do salute lee theres not much more we can do except approach all the International Organizations that was set up after the 2nd world war many the United Nations so we are hoping that this is appealing to these institutions and the stronger countries in the world the superpower the us join china as a supporter of russia European Countries where we are approaching all of them that this flashpoint what is kashmir if they do not resolve it this has potential of having an impact on the entire world and unfortunately because of this whole thing about big markets you know countries look and markets and trade and employment in their own countries they look upon india as a market of 1000000000 people. They do not realize that if they do not intervened right now this is consequences not just as i said on the subcontinent on world trade everyone will be affected by this you mention the us you talked about countries potentially intervening in this crisis now when you were in the United States in july and you met with President Trump he had made a public offer to try to mediate in the dispute over kashmir between india and pakistan you were open to that Prime Minister modi was not do you think that this is something that could happen because just in the last few days President Trump has said again that he would be willing to mediate do you believe this can happen you see 1st of all i mean you know we are thankful to President Trump because. You know he is the president of the most powerful country in the world and if the United States the president of the United States intervenes in this and seriously into weans its its one way that you can guarantee that there will be some sort of resolution secondly even if he doesnt intervene directly the United States has this power in the United Nations Security Council. That can as a Security Council the the u. N. Can act you see why i think. India is stone walling the situation because india knows that once the International Community gets involved then then the ruling will be for the people of kashmir the International Community will insist on the people of kashmir exercising their right of selfdetermination id like to focus on another component of your meeting with President Trump for just a minute because when you were there much of your meeting time was taken up with the issue of afghanistan now i want to ask what do you make of President Trump basically calling off the peace talks with the taliban and how do you believe thats going to impact the security situation for pakistan. Well 1st lets just concentrate on of understand billy from a human point of view everyone must want to. Help the afghans get peace so therefore pakistan is playing its part whatever little influence we have on the taliban we have asked them to you know go on the dialogue table theyve all agree the talks with the americans actually were at a pretty advanced state the only thing was now to get the taliban to talk to the yvonne government so that you know they can all get together and decide what they want to do not this is unfortunate what i think its because of the bloodshed that is going on in afghanistan the idea that there is be you know talks dialogue and at the same time youre fighting that always was going to be tricky so i hope that this is a temporary thing i hope that President Trump will get the talks going again because there is no other solution there is not going to be a military solution if there was in 1000 years there would have been one this is already the longest war fought by the americans so the only way out is getting back on the dialogue table are we spoke a lot about the security situation i want to turn for a bit to the economy how would you classify pakistans economy many people say that its failing many of your critics blame you including former finance minister is hocked or he blames you for the current economic crisis what do you say to that and to the other critics who are blaming you for had the economy is right now pakistan inherited the worst economy ever in our history we had the biggest current account deficit you know which in our history nor the government has had to face that meant that the rupee the moment we took over because there were a shortage of dollars because we were selling much less than we were buying from the world that meant there was a pressure on our rupee and so the rupee devalued when the rupee devalues. There has to be inflation because everything import few. Affects electricity. It goes you know 40 percent of electricity is from imported fuel than gas to be import l. N. G. That everything gets expensive so a country goes through difficult period but the problem is we could header tit this huge deficit but the good uses that we have broad down the the current account deficit by 70 percent we had exports are going up weve cut tailed i import so the gap has a dire owed an a current account deficit which means we are going in the right direction political leaders around the world they get branded with nicknames now surely you must be aware that there are critics of yours and others in pakistan who call you the Prime Minister of u. Turns and they do so because they say you make u. Turns on policy promises and and one such issue they talk about when they mention this is they talk about your stance on the i. M. F. And they say that before you had promise not to seek out any more help from the i. M. F. And that now you are your economic plan is based on a bail out and if this would be a prove this to be the 13th time in the last 30 years pakistan as a received and assistance package from the i. M. F. Whats different this this time i mean why let me just say one thing im glad this prime ministry of u. Turns only an idiot doesnt do any utahns only a moron it when hes on a course and he comes across as a brick wall or only that stupid it it keeps banging his head against a brick wall and intelligent person immediately revises strategy at and goes road it ciro be a with the nick as a as i was a when i was a cricketer i mean we would have a strategy when we would go on the field but all the time i would be genuine started you according to the situation i mean only of forward brant someone not doing u. Turns if these corrupt a leader not country if they had done a utan from corruption there would be in jails the right now and he were let me go back to the mint put i am have when we got office we had you know we did a 6000000000. 00 a 6000000000. 00. Deal with the i. M. F. We had 90 in the half 1000000000. 00 trade current account deficit so while how were we going to fill in this gap and listen and we had a loan and between and in that time we raised exports we cut dollar exports so until that time was there was a good to be a time lag how were we going to last from that period to the time when we had curtailed that you did a bridging the gap we did a bridging loan so you know this i mean they should judge me. Inshallah when my 5 or 5 years are complete then they should ask be. Why when i am responsible for my economy am i going to rely on loans or not and in charlotte this will be the last i am a package we will ever have but as far as now to day does this mean talking about the u. Turn in this policy does this mean that you are recognizing that it is necessary for pakistans Financial Stability and for the economy that you must ask for external support and i do not believe if you if a country manages its economy properly it does it should not have to borrow money from from i. M. F. Or anyone the fact that you have a big deficit you have to go at borrow money means that you are not running your economic economy properly but when you inherit a sick economy then im afraid in the short time before you can raise your income to bridge this gap im afraid you have to take loans so. What im pledging to my people that inshallah when we when we are not term is completed we will leave a surplus economy but does that mean that the i. M. F. Could exercise more control over pakistans decision making. Well they havent excise any control right now apart from telling us to. Put a house in order in terms of cutting down our expenditure and raising our revenues they havent really asked us to do anything which is against our sovereignty we have a very important relationship with china were talking about the economy pakistan is the beneficiary of chinese aid and investment its part of the global belt and Road Initiative but the Chinese Government has been fiercely criticized by especially western countries for its reported treatment of weaker muslims have you had a chance to formally discuss this issue with president xi of china no i havent frankly you know we have been physics so many of our internal problems right now that you know i have not really i dont know much about this problem and lets face it i mean ever since weve been in power for one year domestically apart from the economy you know apart from dealing with the situation and kashmir really weve been inundated with problems but i would say one thing about china for us china has been the best friend Prime Minister can you have been criticized these past few months for not issuing any statements of condemnation when it comes to chinas reported treatment of the weaker community do you have any stance on the issue. While i again appreciate you know i am at the moment my responsibility of people of pakistan. I have 21020000000 pakistanis i am responsible to they are my responsibility and therefore my number one effort is to help my own countrymen there is an ex parliamentarian from your party brother of kumar he has said that he is trying to seek asylum in india and he has argued that there are minority groups that are being persecuted in pakistan he has also said that the old pakistan is better than your new pakistan what do you say to that. If if i remember right this is a guy who has who is responsible for assassinating one of our one of our most loved member of our party member of parliament. In saying he was an assembly and this man was responsible for assassinating him i dont know where he is right now but last i know he was in jail. For him to say things like that let me just make it clear ever since by government has come into power we have this one government has pledged that every pakistani regardless of his religion would be an equal citizen of this country our government has opened up the. Door made great efforts for the sick community in opening up the religious sites we have we are going to do. All the religious sites of all different religions like hindus. The secularism the Christian Community my government will be protecting all of them and ill just say one other thing you know if 9 order to use a mistreated in pakistan thats against the constitution its against our religion. Its against. The principles of the holy prophet peace be upon him because minorities were always regarded as equal citizens of islam so when we are unjust to them we go against ideology and religion the difference between us and what the r. S. S. Back to be j. P. Government is doing in india that when they mistreat minorities it is according to the ide ideology they do not believe that minorities april citizens thats the big difference sorry youve also faced criticism by civil rights activists saying that the space for dissent for freedom of expression has shrunk since you took office there are journalists in pakistan who said that there has been a crackdown against the media that Even Television stations have been taken off the air what do you say to those criticisms this is. An Utter Nonsense pakistan is one of the freer sprays in the world and media. You know the members of the media have said things against me against my government they would never get away and any other democracy they have bustle attacks against be had had this been any other even any other democracy democracy the t. V. Channels would have closed down the freedom that journalists have in this country is unprecedented this is one of the most tolerant governments ever although we think weve gone overboard we think we will stay we will strengthen our regulatory body that fake news on that basis allegations should be made against the government against the ministers against against. Anyone so we are thinking of writing the regulations i think we just people can get away with anything they say or youve been youve been in office now almost a year many of your critics say that you have not delivered on a new pakistan but i want to ask you do you believe we are now in a new pakistan and what should the pakistani people expect Going Forward i think we already knew pakistan. New pakistan means number one rule of law never have criminals ever been put into jail like they have right now. The big difference in this pakistan is the government has it has been well weve been in government for 13 months theres not one Corruption Case against any minister any Prime Minister this is unheard of none of us are building up a Business Empire as we have conflict of interest none of us have got businesses going as was the case in the past but most importantly this government is devolving power right down we have a local government system which will liberate the people from below which is just coming into effect right now and you know the difference between now and then is that 1st time were actually taking the most difficult decisions to fix our economy power sector we have got down you see the problem was before that we had this huge debt accumulating in the power sector because apart from the fact that they were the generation of electricity was more expensive than what it was being sold to the people there was message theft of election electricity and that theft was passed on to the consumer we have cracked down on or on theft and really brought down the. You know the amount of what is called line losses so this government has done things which no government has done before but you know as a say rome wasnt built in a day when you start making these massive changes and reforms it takes time the time to judge a government is after 5 years but in our case we feel that from now on the most difficult period which weve weve passed through the 1st year was the most difficult period but from now on words people will start seeing the difference already we are cut have got down the losses in our airline we are about to start. The next 4 months the steelman Big Government go persians closed that will start functioning as i said in the electricity the part of has been cut off so the direction of the country is no right and from there on was will go from strength to strength by just any Prime Minister iran can thank you for talking to aljazeera. 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President donald trump says its looking like iran was behind saturdays attacks the crippled more than half saudi arabias Oil Production but he says he doesnt want to war and will wait to see if theres definitive proof to iran was involved before deciding how to respond carol is on the reports from washington. President donald trump says the u. S. Is still collecting and analyzing intelligence related to saturdays attack on Saudi Oil Facilities but says all evidence gathered dust for points to one country when asked if that country was iran this was the president s response