Islamabad, Pakistan – Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, has signalled his readiness to fix ties with the US after repeatedly accusing Washington of conspiring to take away him from energy in April.
“So far as I’m involved, it’s over, it’s behind me. The Pakistan I wish to lead will need to have good relationships with everybody, particularly the US,” he mentioned in an interview with the Monetary Occasions printed on Saturday.
Whereas he expressed a willingness to work with the US if he’s re-elected and mentioned he needs a “dignified” relationship with the US, the 70-year-old additionally criticised Pakistan’s relationship with the US.
“Our relationship with the US has been as of a master-servant relationship, or a master-slave relationship, and we’ve been used like a employed gun. However for that I blame my very own governments greater than the US,” he mentioned.
The US Embassy in Islamabad has but to reply to a request by Al Jazeera to touch upon Khan’s latest conciliatory remarks.
Khan was eliminated as prime minister in April following a vote of no confidence in parliament, which he has since blamed on a US-led international conspiracy that additionally concerned Pakistan’s highly effective navy institution and his political rivals.
He has by no means offered any proof to again his allegations. Islamabad and Washington have denied the fees.
‘The gloves are off’
On November 3, Khan was shot and wounded within the leg in Wazirabad metropolis, within the japanese province of Punjab, whereas main a protest march on the capital to demand early elections. The present Nationwide Meeting’s time period ends in October 2023.
The lengthy march, which started on October 28 from Lahore, resumed after the taking pictures, and Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) social gathering is on its method to Islamabad. Whereas he’s unable to bodily attend, he addresses his supporters each night.
Khan instructed the Monetary Occasions within the interview, shortly after he was shot, that early elections had been the one method to restore political stability and warned of rising financial upheaval in the event that they aren’t held quickly.
His recognition has typically surged due to his anti-American rhetoric, however Khan’s strolling again the US conspiracy principle was inevitable, mentioned analyst Mosharraf Zaidi from the Tabadlab think-tank in Islamabad.
It was not the primary time that Khan used a populist trope “he is aware of to be unfaithful to excite his base”, Zaidi mentioned.
“The rationale that is coming to the fore now’s that the US angle in his conspiracy principle allowed him to assault the navy management with out truly attacking it,” Zaidi instructed Al Jazeera.
“Now that the gloves between him and Common Bajwa [Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa] are coming off, the utility of sustaining the US veneer is considerably diminished.”
Whereas the US has traditionally been one in all Pakistan’s shut allies, the final decade has seen a cooling off regardless of Washington being Islamabad’s key safety and financial associate.
Pakistan has acquired greater than $30bn {dollars} in help over the previous 20 years alone as one of many US’s key companions within the so-called “battle on terror” in Afghanistan.
A senior PTI official denied that Khan was anti-American, saying as an alternative that he was merely questioning US coverage.
“Imran Khan has by no means been an anti-American politician, his narrative has by no means been anti-America,” mentioned Asad Umar.
“His politics is that the US coverage is rarely per American beliefs itself, nor within the curiosity of our area, nor within the curiosity of America itself. There’s a very clear distinction in his criticism which must be drawn to take his statements in context,” Umar instructed Al Jazeera.
Zaidi, the analyst, believes Khan “will proceed to play one recreation along with his followers and one other with publications such because the FT [Financial Times] as a result of his major viewers is his populism-vulnerable supporter.”
He added: “As soon as he has energy … he can at all times stroll again the nonsensical and patently unfaithful master-slave sort narratives.”