Interim Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has said that it was not possible for a nation to divorce itself from the United States if it wanted to run with the pace of the world.

“How could any nation or any society divorce itself from North America, it’s not possible,” he said during an interactive session with a delegation of students from Harvard, who are in Pakistan on a visit on Saturday. The students also interacted with Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir on Friday.

Pakistan-US relationship hit its lowest ebb in March and April 2022 when the-then prime minister Imran Khan accused the United States of orchestrating his ouster through a no-confidence vote.

The vote, though planned earlier, came immediately after Khan visited Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The PDM-led government which Imran Khan claimed was propped into power with Washington’s backing was, however, keen on reviving its relationship with China.

“We are sane enough. We are rational enough to engage in this relationship. We feel all positivity towards it, [but] it does not mean that everything America does or American thinks we agree with. Of course, we have a very healthy disagreement on a variety of issues,” said Kakar.

Like any other nation, he added that the two countries have a convergence of interests and divergence of interests on matters related to the regional and global outlook.

The premier highlighted: “Don’t forget that the capitalist system’s frontline state was Pakistan. The entire GDP (gross domestic product) of the Western hemisphere … probably $20 trillion or $40 trillion… is preserved because we fought a war with Marxist ideas where the Soviet regime, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, was giving and demonstrating an alternate political and economic system.

If we wouldn’t have fought from 1979 to 1989, the $30 trillion of the capitalist economy wouldn’t have been there, we contributed to that … we were in the forefront, but I feel at times we fail to articulate what we have contributed towards global peace, global security and global economic and financial institutions.“

He cited the example of Israel, saying that the two countries that were built on “religious aspirations”. The PM said that even though the nations had taken different courses and had different destinies, they lived in an environment where security was of utmost importance.