ISLAMABAD, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's top civil and military leaders on Tuesday showed disappointment at the recent remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump against the country and rejected the "unwarranted allegations," said the Prime Minister Office here after a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC).
The NSC, which is consisted of key ministers and services chief and presided over by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, noted its deep disappointment with Trump's tweet which said "The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools."
According to a statement released by the NSC, the meeting reached a consensus that despite all "unwarranted allegations, Pakistan cannot act in haste and will remain committed to playing a constructive role toward an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process, not just for the sake of its own people, but also for the peace and security of the region and the international community."
The participants observed that even nowadays Pakistan is firmly supporting the U.S.-led international efforts in Afghanistan.
"A result of Pakistan's counter-terrorism cooperation, Al-Qaeda had been decimated from the region, and that it was mostly because of this support that Pakistan was suffering a brutal backlash, including the killing of hundred of its schoolchildren by terrorists based in Afghanistan," the statement said.
The leaders observed that given this positive direction of progression, "recent statements and articulation by the American leadership were completely incomprehensible as they contradicted facts manifestly, struck with great insensitivity at the trust between two nations built over generations, and negated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation -- a nation that has contributed so significantly to regional and global security and peace."
The participants noted that over the past several years, Pakistan's counter terrorism campaign has served as a bulwark against possible expansion of scores of terrorist organizations currently present in Afghanistan -- a fact acknowledged by the U.S. authorities at the highest levels.
"Most of these terrorists have repeatedly launched cross border attacks against innocent Pakistanis with impunity by exploiting presence of millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, a porous Pak-Afghan border and large tracts of ungoverned spaces inside Afghanistan," the statement said.
The committee held the view that Pakistan has fought the war against terrorism primarily out of its own resources and at a great cost to its economy, and that even more importantly the huge sacrifices made by Pakistan, including the loss of tens of thousands of lives of Pakistani civilians and security personnel, and the pain of their families, could not be trivialized so heartlessly by pushing all of it behind a monetary value -- and that too an imagined one.
