Time to Forget the Past and Build for the Future

KARACHI -- Immediately after independence, it was the Soviet Union that supported the Pakistani membership in the United Nations, but then the country became a close US ally in the 'cold war', says Russian Consul General in Karachi Andrey V Demidov, who is a PhD in Political Science, in an article published on bilateral relations and cooperation between Russia and Pakistan. History of bilateral relations between the Russian federation and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not an easy one. Pakistan joined military blocks CENTO and SEATO that were openly anti-Soviet and finally it was from here that the US launched a spy-plane into Soviet airspace which was, however, shot down. Demidov says that relations between Russia and Pakistan became especially uneasy in the 80s during the former's military campaign in Afghanistan. "The more one analyses the issue of that campaign the clearer it becomes that the whole story was orchestrated not in Moscow and not in Islamabad but certain people in a certain country wanted to avenge for their defeat in Vietnam. "I want to stress that the Soviet Union never ever had plans to reach 'warm waters' of the Indian Ocean through Pakistan and the whole idea was a hostile propaganda." He says that contrary to the difficult political climate of that time, the Soviet Union extended its friendly hand to Pakistan and assisted the latter in building the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), but on political grounds, Pakistan rejected the already agreed project of setting up an assembly plant for Russian small and cheap cars in Sindh.