ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday it would be a "big mistake" to ignore Afghanistan, calling on Western powers to unfreeze Kabul’s financial assets and help the war-ravaged nation build a sustainable economy.
Sharif was addressing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Council of Heads of State (CHS) meeting in Samarkand where he arrived on Thursday.
At the outset of his address on the second day of his visit, the prime minister said “peace in Afghanistan would ensure peace in Pakistan" since the two were neighbouring countries.
"What is good for Afghanistan is good for Pakistan and vice versa.”
The prime minister urged the participants to “work together” to support education, health, job opportunities, industry and agriculture in Afghanistan.
“It will be a big mistake if we ignore Afghanistan this time around,” he said, adding that it was Pakistan’s considered opinion that “strengthening Afghanistan in the security and counter-terrorism domain should run parallel to SCO’s support to the Afghan people in the socio-economic arenas.”
“Apart from enhanced humanitarian assistance, the international community must support efforts to build a sustainable Afghan economy,” he said. “Unfreezing of Afghanistan’s financial assets remains a crucial need in this regard.”
The prime minister also urged the Afghan Taliban-run government to ensure inclusiveness and human rights for all citizens and all categories of society, especially women and minorities.
Talking about the floods in Pakistan that have killed 1,500 people and rendered millions homeless, the premier said: “I have never seen with my eyes this kind of terrible devastation. It is catastrophic of proportions unknown to the people of Pakistan.”
The prime minister said stagnant water in flood-hit areas was causing water-borne diseases like malaria and diarrhoea, while standing crops worth million of acres had been washed away and around a million animals were killed.
He said the country’s economic loss from flooding was running into billions of dollars.
According to a report by World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international research collaboration that teases out the role of climate change in extreme events, the torrential monsoon that has submerged more than a third of Pakistan was a one in a hundred-year event likely made more intense by climate change.
“The point is: will this be last time a country is going to be the victim of this devastation,” Sharif asked SCO member states, calling on the world to pay attention to climate change impacts.
“Let SCO stand up and build a wall against this menace,” he added. “But that can only be done through a well thought out plan, a plan which is sustainable through structures and through programs.”
