Experience is said to be a great guide in the life of individuals and nations to boot. Experience of hindsight tells us that in times of distress and crises it is only China and Turkey which had stood four square behind us though there had been no dearth of fair weather friendly counties Had we not cuddled up to Washington only from 1951 onwards and had also kept cordial ties with Moscow we would have been spared of umpteen crises which we have been facing from time to time
Thanks God lately we have hit it off with Russia The ties with China need to be cemented further . Air Marshal Asghar Khan has written in one of his books that during 1965 Indo Pak war Ayub Khan had sent him to Beijing for finding out the extent to which China could help assist us militarily When he met the then Chinese prime minister Chou en Lai and broached that issue with him he replied that all fighter planes of Chinese air force are at Pakistan’s disposal but with a meaningful smile on his face he also said I know Ayub Khan won’t accept our offer as he would not like to offend America. This one sentence waxed eloquent of the extent of our allegiance to the Yankees. It is a wise step on the part of powers that be to equip armed forces of the country with state of the art Chinese military equipment which had proved its mettle in the recent flare up of Pakistan with India.
POST SCRIPT:
More than one hundred passengers lost their lives in air crash of an Air India plane near Ahmadad the other day A recent survey says that ninty percent of air crashes take place because of pilot’s error and seldom due to machine failures
Slanging match between the lower echelon leadership of the PPP and PML N reveals that all is not well within the political alliance that is holding these two political parties together and as a result of which they are moving in the corridors of power. In parliamentary democracies the formation of coalition governments are often subjected to blackmail by their junior partners in government who have to be willy dilly kept in good humour by the prime minister in order to ensure continuity in their government.
