Pakistan President Accepts NATO Summit Invite

Yet another Georgia who will never receive the NATO membership.

Hello RFE/RL ,
one is surprised that the snapshot of " Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is flanked by his Afghan and Iranian counterparts, Hamid Karzai (left) and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, after a joint press conference in Islamabad in February." has been displayed . This has no * NEWS* connection with the invitation to Pakistan to be present at Chicago.

This is not fair; you are biasing our attitudes to the news factors,in a subliminal manner !!!

What are the unprejudiced background facts ?

These : ***Earlier, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen indicated that Pakistan would not be invited to attend the Nato summit because of its refusal to open the Nato supply routes through the country.

Then on May 15, 2012, with Pakistan hinting at opening the routes, the golden invitation was instantly deposited at its door.**

One hopes that people understand that there are consequences borne by those who have the misfortune of living in the path of Nato convoys, passing through Pakistan.

It leads to violence in the streets of Karachi and Quetta and the Peshawar areas.

An article in the Pakistani newspaper , DAWN says :
"---In reality it is unlikely that any of these things will be considered by Americans in Chicago or anywhere else in a country happily insulated from the wars it wages in other people’s backyards.

Just as the Nato secretary-general insisted on saying that the supply route is “blocked” bossily implying the existence of some pre-existing right possessed by his organisation to pass through any country, few in the US have paused to assess the supply issue as one imposing a security cost on Pakistan. "

The article continues : "---If they did they would note that few or no Americans would permit their neighbourhood roads to be used to transport dangerous criminals or drugs or weapons from one place to another. The danger would be that escaped criminals or those wishing to procure drugs or guns would resort to violence when they became aware of the route, endangering everyone who lived or worked or went to school nearby.

According to Nato, that right it seems belongs only to the citizens of wealthy countries that make up the organisation; it is only they who can object, disallow, ban and forbid the use of their own territory when it involves inviting danger into their immediate environment. For lesser people, Pakistanis and Afghans, such reservations invite accusations of intractability, of collusion with the terrorists themselves.

It is time that the issue of the Nato supply route began to be evaluated not simply in terms of how crucial the supplies are for US forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the danger it creates for ordinary Pakistanis forced to facilitate its passage through their war-ridden backyards.

Perhaps as they sit and decide the future of the region, Nato officials can take a moment to consider that the ‘supply route’ is not a road suspended in air and one prong of their elaborate war-mongering strategies but a path through a country populated by real, living people who weep when they are hurt and bleed when they are killed.

The writer ( in DAWN) is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law, in new York. Here name is :

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com